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ESSAYS FOR COLLEGE MEN 



Second Series 



Chosen by 

NORMAN FOERSTER 

FREDERICK A. MANCHESTER 

KARL YOUNG 



" the power of conduct, the power of 
intellect and knowledge, the power 
of beauty, and the power of social 
life and manners " 



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NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1915 









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Copyright, 1915, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



SEP 23 1915 

©CI,A411653 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. What Is a College For? 3 

Woodrow Wilson. 
II. Ok General and Professional Education . 29 
John Caird. 

III. Academic Leadership 41 

Paul Elmer More. 

IV. The American Scholar TO 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
V. The Method of Scientific Discovery . . 102 
Thomas Henry Huxley. 
VI. Darwinism as Applied to Man .... 137 

Alfred Russel Wallace. 
VII. The Religion of Humanity .... 190 

Arthur t,'ames Balfour. 
VIII. The Provinces of the Several Arts . . 218 
John Addington Symonds. 

IX. Literature 243 

John Henry Newman. 

X. Books ^'^'^ 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

XI. The Working of the American Democracy . 307 
Charles William Eliot. 

XII. War 341 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
XIII. The Moral Equivalent of War . . . 365 
William James. 



ESSAYS FOR COLLEGE MEN 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR?' 

WOODROW WILSON 

It may seem singular that at this time of day 
and in this confident century it should be neces- 
sary to ask, What is a college for? But it has 
become necessary. I take it for granted that there 
are few real doubts concerning the question in the 
minds of those who look at the college from the 
inside and have made themselves responsible for 
the realization of its serious purposes ; but there 
are many divergent opinions held concerning it 
by those who, standing on the outside, have pon- 
dered the uses of the college in the life of the 
country; and their many varieties of opinion may 
very well have created a confusion of counsel in 
the public mind. 

They are, of course, entirely entitled to their 
independent opinions and have a right to expect 
that full consideration will be given what they say 
by those who are in fact responsible. The college 
is for the use of the nation, not for the satisfac- 

^ ScHbner's Magazine, November, 1909 ; copyright, 1909, 
by Charles Scribner's Sons. Reprinted through the gen- 
erous permission of Woodrow Wilson and of Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. 

3 



4 WOODROW WILSON 

tion of those who administer it or for the carry- 
ing out of their private views. They may speak 
as experts and with a very intimate knowledge, but 
they also speak as servants of the country and 
must be challenged to give reasons for the con- 
victions they entertain. Controversy, it may be, 
is not profitable in such matters, because it is so 
easy, in the face of opposition, to become a par- 
tisan of one's own views and exaggerate them in 
seeking to vindicate and establish them; but an 
explicit profession of faith cannot fail to clear 
the air, and to assist the thinking both of those 
v/ho are responsible and of those who only look 
on and seek to make serviceable comment. 

Why, then, should a man send his son to college 
when school is finished ; or why should he advise 
any youngster in whom he is interested to go to 
college? What does he expect and desire him to 
get there? The question might be carried back 
and asked with regard to the higher schools also 
to which lads resort for preparation for college. 
What are they meant to get there? But it will 
suffice to centre the question on the college. What 
should a lad go to college for, — for work, for the 
realization of a definite aim, for discipline and a 
severe training of his faculties, or for relaxation, 
for the release and exercise of his social powers, 
for the broadening effects of life in a sort of 
miniature world in which study is only one among 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 5 

many interests? That is not the only alternative 
suggested by recent discussions. They also sug- 
gest a sharp alternative with regard to the 
character of the study the college student should 
undertake. Should he seek at college a general 
discipline of his faculties, a general awakening to 
the issues and interests of the modern world, or 
should he, rather, seek specially and definitely to 
prepare himself for the work he expects to do 
after he leaves college, for his support and ad- 
vancement in the world? The two alternatives are 
very different. The one asks whether the lad does 
not get as good a preparation for modern life by 
being manager of a foot-ball team with a compli- 
cated programme of intercollegiate games and 
trips away from home as by becoming proficient 
in mathematics or in history and mastering the 
abstract tasks of the mind ; the other asks whether 
he is not better prepared by being given the spe- 
cial skill and training of a particular calling or 
profession, an immediate drill in the work he is to 
do after he graduates, than by being made a mas- 
ter of his own mind in the more general fields of 
knowledge to which his subsequent calling will be 
related, in all probability, only as every under- 
taking is related to the general thought and ex- 
perience of the world. 

" Learning " is not involved. No one has ever 
dreamed of imparting learning to undergraduates. 



6 WOODROW WILSON 

It cannot be done in four years. To become a 
man of learning is the enterprise of a life-time. 
The issue does not rise to that high ground. The 
question is merely this : do we wish college to be, 
first of all and chiefly, a place of mental discipline 
or only a school of general experience ; and, if we 
wish it to be a place of mental discipline, of what 
sort do we wish the discipline to be, — a general 
awakening and release of the faculties, or a pre- 
liminary initiation into the drill of a particular 
vocation.^ 

These are questions which go to the root of the 
matter. They admit of no simple and confident 
answer. Their roots spring out of life and all 
its varied sources. To reply to them, therefore, 
involves an examination of modern life and an as- 
sessment of the part an educated man ought to 
play in it, — an analysis which no man may attempt 
with perfect self-confidence. The life of our day 
is a very complex thing which no man can pretend 
to comprehend in its entirety. 

But some things are obvious enough concerning 
it. There is an uncommon challenge to effort in 
the modern world, and all the achievements to 
which it challenges are uncommonly difficult. In- 
dividuals are yoked together in modern enterprise 
by a harness which is both new and inelastic. The 
man who understands only some single process, 
some single piece of work which he has been set 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 7 

to do, will never do anything else, and is apt to be 
deprived at almost any moment of the opportunity 
to do even that, because processes change, indus- 
try undergoes instant revolutions. New inven- 
tions, fresh discoveries, alterations in the markets 
of the world throw accustomed methods and the 
men who are accustomed to them out of date and 
use without pause or pity. The man of special 
skill may be changed into an unskilled laborer 
over night. Moreover, it is a day in which no 
enterprise stands alone or independent, but is re- 
lated to every other and feels changes in all parts 
of the globe. The men with mere skill, with mere 
technical knowledge, will be mere servants per- 
petually, and may at any time become useless serv- 
ants, their skill gone out of use and fashion. The 
particular thing they do may become unnecessary 
or may be so changed that they cannot compre- 
hend or adjust themselves to the change. 

These, then, are the things the modern world 
must have in its trained men, and I do not know 
where else it is to get them if not from its educated 
men and the occasional self-developed genius of 
an exceptional man here and there. It needs, at 
the top, not a few, but many men with the power 
to organize and guide. The college is meant to 
stimulate in a considerable number of men what 
would be stimulated in only a few if we were to 
depend entirely upon nature and circumstance. 



8 WOODROW WILSON 

Below the ranks of generalship and guidance, the 
modern world needs for the execution of its varied 
and difficult business a very much larger number 
of men with great capacity and readiness for the 
rapid and concentrated exertion of a whole series 
of faculties : planning faculties as well as technical 
skill, the ability to handle men as well as to handle 
tools and correct processes, faculties of adjust- 
ment and adaptation as well as of precise exe- 
cution, — ^men of resource as well as knowledge. 
These are the athletes, the athletes of faculty, of 
which our generation most stands in need. All 
through its ranks, besides, it needs masterful men 
who can acquire a working knowledge of many 
things readily, quickly, intelligently, and with ex- 
actness, — things they had not foreseen or pre- 
pared themselves for beforehand, and for which 
they could not have prepared themselves before- 
hand. Quick apprehension, quick comprehension, 
quick action are what modern life puts a premium 
upon, — a readiness to turn this way or that and 
not lose force or momentum. 

To me, then, the question seems to be, Shall the 
lad who goes to college go there for the purpose 
of getting ready to be a servant merely, a servant 
who will be nobody and who may become useless, 
or shall he go there for the purpose of getting 
ready to be a master adventurer in the field of 
modern opportunity.'^ 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 9 

We must expect hewers of wood and drawers 
of water to come out of the colleges in their due 
proportion, of course, but I take it for granted 
that even the least gifted of them did not go to 
college with the ambition to be nothing more. And 
yet one has hardly made the statement before he 
begins to doubt whether he can safely take any- 
thing for granted. Part of the very question we 
are discussing is the ambition with which young 
men now go to college. It is a day when a college 
course has become fashionable, — but not for the 
purpose of learning, not for the purpose of ob- 
taining a definite preparation for anything, — no 
such purpose could become fashionable. The 
clientage of our colleges has greatly changed since 
the time when most of the young men who resorted 
to them did so with a view to entering one or other 
of the learned professions. Young men who ex- 
pect to go into business of one kind or another 
now outnumber among our undergraduates those 
who expect to make some sort of learning the basis 
of their work throughout life ; and I dare say that 
they generally go to college without having made 
any very definite analysis of their aim and purpose 
in going. Their parents seem to have made as 
little. 

The enormous increase of wealth in the country 
in recent years, too, has had its effect upon the 
colleges, — not in the way that might have been 



10 WOODROW WILSON 

expected, — not, as yet, by changing the standard 
of life to any very noticeable extent or introduc- 
ing luxury and extravagance and vicious indul- 
gence. College undergraduates have usually the 
freshness of youth about them, out of which there 
springs a wholesome simplicity, and it is not easy 
to spoil them or to destroy their natural democ- 
racy. They make a life of their own and insist 
upon the maintenance of its standards. But the 
increase of wealth has brought into the colleges, 
in rapidly augmenting numbers, the sons of very 
rich men, and lads who expect to inherit wealth 
are not as easily stimulated to effort, are not as 
apt to form definite and serious purposes, as those 
who know that they must whet their wits for the 
struggle of life. 

There was a time when the mere possession of 
wealth conferred distinction; and when wealth 
confers distinction it is apt to breed a sort of 
consciousness of opportunity and responsibility 
in those who possess it and incline them to seek 
serious achievement. But that time is long past 
in America. Wealth is common. And, by the 
same token, the position of the lad who is to in- 
herit it is a peculiarly disadvantageous one, if the 
standard of success is to rise above mediocrity. 
Wealth removes the necessity for effort, and yet 
effort is necessary for the attainment of distinc- 
tion, and very great effort at that, in the modern 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 11 

world, as I have already pointed out. It would 
look as if the ordinary lad with expectations were 
foredoomed to obscurity ; for the ordinary lad 
will not exert himself unless he must. 

We live in an age in which no achievement is to 
be cheaply had. All the cheap achievements, open 
to amateurs, are exhausted and have become com- 
monplace. Adventure, for example, is no longer 
extraordinary : which is another way of saying 
that it is commonplace. Any amateur may seek 
and find adventure ; but it has been sought and 
had in all its kinds. Restless men, idle men, chiv- 
alrous men, men drawn on by mere curiosity and 
men drawn on by love of the knowledge that lies 
outside books and laboratories, have crossed the 
whole face of the habitable globe in search of it, 
ferreting it out in corners even, following its by- 
paths and beating its coverts, and it is nowhere 
any longer a novelty or distinction to have discov- 
ered and enjoyed it. The whole round of pleasure, 
moreover, has been exhausted time out of mind, 
and most of it discredited as not pleasure after 
all, but just an expensive counterfeit; so that 
many rich people have been driven to devote them- 
selves to expense regardless of pleasure. No new 
pleasure, I am credibly informed, has been invented 
within the memory of man. For every genuine 
thrill and satisfaction, therefore, we are appar- 
ently, in this sophisticated world, shut in to work, 



12 WOODROW WILSON 

to modifying and quickening the life of the age. 
If college be one of the highways to life and 
achievement, it must be one of the highways to 
work. 

The man who comes out of college into the mod- 
ern world must, therefore, have got out of it, if 
he has not wasted four vitally significant years of 
his life, a quickening and a training which will 
make him in some degree a master among men. 
If he has got less, college was not worth his while. 
To have made it worth his while he must have got 
such a preparation and development of his facul- 
ties as will give him movement as well as mere 
mechanical efficiency in affairs complex, difficult, 
and subject to change. The word efficiency has 
in our day the power to think at the centre of it, 
the power of independent movement and initiative. 
It is not merely the suitability to be a good tool, 
it is the power to wield tools, and among the tools 
are men and circumstances and changing processes 
of industry, changing phases of life itself. There 
should be technical schools a great many and the 
technical schools of America should be among the 
best in the world. The men they train are indis- 
pensable. The modern world needs more tools 
than managers, more workmen than master work- 
men. But even the technical schools must have 
some thought of mastery and adaptability in their 
processes ; and the colleges, which are not tech- 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 13 

nical schools, should think of that chiefly. We 
must distinguish what the college is for, without 
disparaging any other school, of any other kind. 
It is for the training of the men who are to rise 
above the ranks. 

That is what a college is for. What it does, 
what it requires of its undergraduates and of its 
teachers, should be adjusted to that conception. 
The very statement of the object, which must be 
plain to all who make any distinction at all be- 
tween a college and a technical school, makes it 
evident that the college must subject its men to 
a general intellectual training which will be nar- 
rowed to no one point of view, to no one vocation 
or calling. It must release and quicken as many 
faculties of the mind as possible, — and not 
only release and quicken them but discipline and 
strengthen them also by putting them to the test 
of systematic labor. Work, definite, exacting, 
long continued, but not narrow or petty or merely 
rule of thumb, must be its law of life for those 
who would pass its gates and go out with its 
authentication. 

By a general training I do not mean vague 
spaces of study, miscellaneous fields of reading, a 
varied smattering of a score of subjects and the 
thorough digestion of none. The field of modern 
knowledge is extremely wide and varied. After a 
certain number of really fundamental subjects 



14 WOODROW WILSON 

have been studied in the schools, the college under- 
graduate must be offered a choice of the route he 
will travel in carrying his studies further. He 
cannot be shown the whole body of knowledge 
within a single curriculum. There is no longer 
any single highway of learning. The roads that 
traverse its vast and crowded spaces are not even 
parallel, and four years is too short a time in 
which to search them all out. But there is a gen- 
eral programme still possible by which the college 
student can be made acquainted with the field of 
modern learning by sample, by which he can be 
subjected to the several kinds of mental discipline, 
— in philosophy, in some one of the great sciences, 
in some one of the great languages which carry 
the thought of the world, in history and in politics, 
which is its framework, — which will give him valid 
naturalization as a citizen of the world of thought, 
the world of educated men, — and no smatterer 
merely, able barely to spell its constitution out, 
but a man who has really comprehended and made 
use of its chief intellectual processes and is ready 
to lay his mind alongside its tasks with some con- 
fidence that he can master them and can under- 
stand why and how they are to be performed. 
This is the general training which should be char- 
acteristic of the college, and the men who undergo 
it ought to be made to undergo it with deep seri- 
ousness and diligent labor; not as soft amateurs 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 15 

with whom learning and its thorough tasks are side 
interests merely, but as those who approach life 
with the intention of becoming professionals in its 
fields of achievement. 

Just now, where this is attempted, it seems to 
fail of success. College men, it is said, and often 
said with truth, come out undisciplined, untrained, 
unfitted for what they are about to undertake. It 
is argued therefore, that what they should have 
been given was special vocational instruction ; that 
if they had had that they would have been inter- 
ested in their work while they were undergradu- 
ates, would have taken it more seriously, and 
would have come out of college ready to be used, 
as they now cannot be. No doubt that is to be 
preferred to a scattered and aimless choice of 
studies, and no doubt what the colleges offer is 
miscellaneous and aimless enough in many cases ; 
but, at best, these are very hopeful assumptions 
on the part of those who would convert our col- 
leges into vocational schools. They are generally 
put forward by persons who do not know how 
college life and work are now organized and con- 
ducted. I do not wonder that they know little of 
what has happened. The whole thing is of very 
recent development, at any rate in its elaborate 
complexity. It is a growth, as we now see it, of 
the last ten or twelve years ; and even recent grad- 
uates of our colleges would rub their eyes incredu- 



16 WOODROW WILSON 

lously to see it if they were to stand again on the 
inside and look at it intimately. 

What has happened is, in general terms, this: 
that the work of the college, the work of its class- 
rooms and laboratories, has become the merely 
formal and compulsory side of its life, and that 
a score of other things, lumped under the term 
" undergraduate activities," have become the vital, 
spontaneous, absorbing realities for nine out of 
every ten men who go to college. These activities 
embrace social, athletic, dramatic, musical, lit- 
erary, religious, and professional organizations 
of every kind, besides many organized for mere 
amusement and some, of great use and dignity, 
which seek to exercise a general oversight and 
sensible direction of college ways and customs. 
Those which consume the most time are, of course, 
the athletic, dramatic, and musical clubs, whose 
practices, rehearsals, games, and performances fill 
the term time and the brief vacations alike. But 
it is the social organizations into which the 
thought, the energy, the initiative, the enthusiasm 
of the largest number of men go, and go in lavish 
measure. 

The chief of these social organizations are 
residential families, — fraternities, clubs, groups of 
house-mates of one kind or another, — in which, 
naturally enough, all the undergraduate interests, 
all the undergraduate activities of the college have 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 17 

their vital centre. The natural history of their 
origin and development is very interesting. They 
grew up very normally. They were necessary be- 
cause of what the college did not do. 

Every college in America, at any rate every 
college outside a city, has tried to provide living 
rooms for its undergraduates, dormitories in which 
they can live and sleep and do their work outside 
the classroom and the laboratory. Very few col- 
leges whose numbers have grown rapidly have been 
able to supply dormitories enough for all their stu- 
dents, and some have deliberately abandoned the 
attempt, but in many of them a very considerable 
proportion of the undergraduates live on the 
campus, in college buildings. It is a very whole- 
some thing that they should live thus under the 
direct influence of the daily life of such a place 
and, at least in legal theory, under the authority 
of the university of which the college forms a 
principal part. But the connection between the 
dormitory life and the real life of the university, 
its intellectual tasks and disciplines, its outlook 
upon the greater world of thought and action 
which lies beyond, far beyond, the boundaries of 
campus and classroom, is very meagre and shad- 
owy indeed. It is hardly more than atmospheric, 
and the atmosphere is very attenuated, perceptible 
only by the most sensitive. 

Formerly, in more primitive, and I must say 



18 WOODROW WILSON 

less desirable, days than these in which we have 
learned the full vigor of freedom college tutors 
and proctors lived in the dormitories and exercised 
a precarious authority. The men were looked 
after in their rooms and made to keep hours and 
observe rules. But those days are happily gone 
by. The system failed of its object. The lads 
were mischievous and recalcitrant, those placed in 
authority over them generally young and unwise; 
and the rules were odious to those whom they were 
meant to restrain. There was the atmosphere of 
the boarding-school about the buildings, and of a 
boarding-school whose pupils had outgrown it. 
Life in college dormitories is much pleasanter now 
and much more orderly, because it is free and gov- 
erned only by college opinion, which is a real, not 
a nominal, master. The men come and go as they 
please and have little consciousness of any 
connection with authority or with the governing 
influences of the university in their rooms, except 
that the university is their landlord and makes 
rules such as a landlord may make. 

Formerly, in more primitive and less pleasant 
days, the college provided a refectory or " com- 
mons " where all undergraduates had their meals, 
a noisy family. It was part of the boarding-school 
life; and the average undergraduate had out- 
grown it as consciously as he had outgrown the 
futile discipline of the dormitory. Now nothing 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 19 

of the kind is attempted. Here and there, in con- 
nection with some large college which has found 
that the boarding-houses and restaurants of the 
town have been furnishing poor food at outrage- 
ous prices to those of its undergraduates who could 
not otherwise provide for themselves, will 
be found a great " commons," at which hundreds 
of men take their meals, amid the hurly-burly of 
numbers, without elegance or much comfort, but 
nevertheless at a well-spread table where the food 
is good and the prices moderate. The undergrad- 
uate may use it or not as he pleases. It is merely 
a great co-operative boarding-place, bearing not 
even a family resemblance to the antique " com- 
mons." It is one of the conveniences of the place. 
It has been provided by the university authorities, 
but it might ha ve^ been provided in some other 
way and have been quite independent of them ; 
and it is usually under undergraduate manage- 
ment. 

Those who do not like the associations or the 
fare of such a place provide for themselves else- 
where, in clubs or otherwise, — generally in fra- 
ternity houses. At most colleges there is no such 
common boarding-place, and all must shift for 
themselves. It is this necessity in the one case and 
desire in the other that has created the chief com- 
plexity now observable in college life and which 
has been chiefly instrumental in bringing about 



20 WOODROW WILSON 

that dissociation of undergraduate life from the 
deeper and more permanent influences of the 
university which has of recent years become so 
marked and so significant. 

Fraternity chapters were once — and that not so 
very long ago — merely groups of undergraduates 
who had bound themselves together by the vows of 
various secret societies which had spread their 
branches among the colleges. They had their 
fraternity rooms, their places of meeting; they 
were distinguished by well known badges and 
formed little coteries distinguishable enough from 
the general body of undergraduates, as they 
wished to be ; but in all ordinary matters they 
shared the common life of the place. The daily 
experiences of the college life they shared with 
their fellows of all kinds and all connections, in an 
easy democracy ; their contacts were the common 
contacts of the classroom and the laboratory not 
only, but also of the boarding-house table and of 
all the usual undergraduate resorts. Members of 
the same fraternity were naturally enough inclined 
to associate chiefly with one another, and were of- 
ten, much too often, inclined, in matters of college 
" politics," to act as a unit and in their own inter- 
est ; but they did not live separately. They did 
not hold aloof or constitute themselves separate 
families, living apart in their own houses, in pri- 
vacy. Now all that is changed. Every fraternity 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? SI 

has its own house, equipped as a complete home. 
The fraternity houses will often be the most inter- 
esting and the most beautiful buildings a visitor 
will be shown when he visits the college. In them 
members take all their meals, in them they spend 
their leisure hours and often do their reading, — 
for each house has its library, — and in them many 
of the members, as many as can be accommodated, 
have their sleeping rooms and live, because the col- 
lege has not dormitories enough to lodge them or 
because they prefer lodging outside the dormi- 
tories. In colleges where there are no fraternities, 
clubs of one sort or another take their places, 
build homes of their own, enjoy a similar privacy 
and separateness, and constitute the centre of all 
that is most comfortable and interesting and at- 
tractive in undergraduate life. 

I am pointing out this interesting and very im- 
portant development, not for the purpose of criti- 
cising it, but merely to explain its natural history 
and the far-reaching results it has brought about. 
The college having determined, wisely enough, 
some generation or two ago, not to be any longer 
a boarding-school, has resolved itself into a mere 
teaching machine, with the necessary lecture rooms 
and laboratories attached and sometimes a few dor- 
mitories, which it regards as desirable but not in- 
dispensable, and has resigned into the hands of the 
undergraduates themselves the whole management 



22 WOODROW WILSON 

of their life outside the classroom; and not only 
its management but also the setting up of all its 
machinery of every kind, — as much as they please, 
— and the constitution of its whole environment, 
so that teachers and pupils are not members of 
one university body but constitute two bodies 
sharply distinguished, — and the undergradurte 
body the more highly organized and indepen lent 
of the two. They parley with one another but 
they do not live with one another, and it is much 
easier for the influence of the highly organized 
and very self-conscious undergraduate body to 
penetrate the faculty than it is for the influence of 
the faculty to permeate the undergraduates. 

It was inevitable it should turn out so in the 
circumstances. I do not wonder that the conse- 
quences were not foreseen and that the whole de- 
velopment has crept upon us almost unawares. 
But the consequences have been very important 
and very far-reaching. It is easy now to see that 
if you leave undergraduates entirely to themselves, 
to organize their own lives while in college as they 
please, — and organize it in some way they must if 
thus cast adrift, — that life, and not the deeper 
interests of the university, will presently dominate 
their thoughts, their imaginations, their favorite 
purposes. And not only that. The work of ad- 
ministering this complex life, with all its organi- 
zations and independent interests, successfully 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 23 

absorbs the energies, the initiative, the planning 
and originating powers of the best men among the 
undergraduates. It is no small task. It would 
tax and absorb older men ; and only the finer, more 
spirited, more attractive, more original and effec- 
tive men are fitted for it or equal to it, where lead- 
ership goes by gifts of personality as well as by 
ability. The very men the teacher most desires 
to get hold of and to enlist in some enterprise of 
the mind, the very men it would most reward him 
to instruct and whose training would count for 
most in leadership outside of college, in the coun- 
try at large, and for the promotion of every inter- 
est the nation has, the natural leaders and doers, 
are drawn off" and monopolized by these necessary 
and engaging undergraduate undertakings. The 
born leaders and managers and originators are 
drafted off* to "run the college" (it is in fact 
nothing less), and the classroom, the laboratory, 
the studious conference with instructors get only 
the residuum of their attention, only what can be 
spared of their energy — are secondary matters 
where they ought to come first. It is the organiza- 
tion that is at fault, not the persons who enter into 
it and are moulded by it. It cannot turn out 
otherwise in the circumstances. The side shows 
are so numerous, so diverting, — so important, if 
you will, — that they have swallowed up the circus, 
and those who perform in the main tent must 



m WOODROW WILSON 

often whistle for their audiences, discouraged and 
humihated. 

Such is college life nowadays, and such its rela- 
tion to college work and the all-important intellec- 
tual interests which the colleges are endowed and 
maintained to foster. I need not stop to argue 
that the main purposes of education cannot be 
successfully realized under such conditions. I 
need not stop to urge that the college was not and 
can never be intended for the uses it is now being 
put to. A young man can learn to become the 
manager of a foot-ball team or of a residential 
club, the leader of an orchestra or a glee club, the 
star of amateur theatricals, an oarsman or a chess 
player without putting himself to the trouble or 
his parents to the expense of four years at a col- 
lege. These are innocent enough things for him 
to do and to learn, though hardly very important 
in the long run; they may, for all I know, make 
for efficiency in some of the simpler kinds of busi- 
ness; and no wise man who knows college lads 
would propose to shut them off from them or wish 
to discourage their interest in them. All work 
and no play makes Jack a dull boy, not only, but 
may make him a vicious boy as well. Amusement, 
athletic games, the zest of contest and competition, 
the challenge there is in most college activities to 
the instinct of initiative and the gifts of leadership 
and achievement, — all these are wholesome means 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 25 

of stimulation, which keep young men from going 
stale and turning to things that demoralize. But 
they should not assume the front of the stage 
where more serious and lasting interests are to be 
served. Men cannot be prepared by them for 
modern life. 

The college is meant for a severer, more definite 
discipline than this : a discipline which will fit men 
for the contests and achievements of an age whose 
every task is conditioned upon some intelligent 
and effective use of the mind, upon some substantial 
knowledge, some special insight, some trained 
capacity, some penetration which comes from study, 
not from natural readiness or mere practical ex- 
perience. 

The side shows need not be abolished. They 
need not be cast out or even discredited. But they 
must be subordinated. They must be put in their 
natural place as diversions, and ousted from their 
present dignity and pre-eminence as occupations. 

And this can be done without making of the 
college again a boarding-school. The characteris- 
tic of the boarding-school is that its pupils are in 
all things in tutelage, are under masters at every 
turn of their life, must do as they are bidden, not 
in the performance of their set tasks only, but 
also in all their comings and goings. It is this 
characteristic that made it impossible and unde- 
sirable to continue the life of the boarding-school 



26 WOODROW WILSON 

into the college, where it is necessary that the 
pupil should begin to show his manhood and make 
his own career. No one who knows what wholesome 
and regulated freedom can do for young men 
ought ever to wish to hail them back to the days 
of childish discipline and restraint of which the 
college of our grandfathers was typical. But a 
new discipline is desirable, is absolutely necessary, 
if the college is to be recalled to its proper pur- 
pose, its bounden duty. It cannot perform its 
duty as it is now organized. 

The fundamental thing to be accomplished in 
the new organization is, that, instead of being the 
heterogeneous congeries of petty organizations it 
now is, instead of being allowed to go to pieces in 
a score of fractions free to cast off from the whole 
as they please, it should be drawn together again 
into a single university family of which the teach- 
ers shall be as natural and as intimate members 
as the undergraduates. The " life " of the college 
should not be separated from its chief purposes 
and most essential objects, should not be con- 
trasted with its duties and in rivalry with them. 
The two should be but two sides of one and the 
same thing; the association of men, young and 
old, for serious mental endeavor and also, in the 
intervals of work, for every wholesome sport and 
diversion. Undergraduate life should not be in 
rivalry and contrast with undergraduate duties: 



WHAT IS A COLLEGE FOR? 27 

undergraduates should not be merely in attend- 
ance upon the college, but parts of it on every 
side of its life, very conscious and active parts. 
They should consciously live its whole life, — not 
under masters, as in school, and yet associated in 
some intimate daily fashion with their masters in 
learning: so that learning may not seem one thing 
and life another. The organizations whose objects 
lie outside study should be but parts of the whole, 
not set against it, but included within it. 

All this can be accomplished by a comparatively 
simple change of organization which will make 
master and pupil members of the same free, self- 
governed family, upon natural terms of intimacy. 
But how it can be done is not our present interest. 
That is another story. It is our present purpose 
merely to be clear what a college is for. That, 
perhaps, I have now pointed out with sufficient 
explicitness. I have shown the incompatibility of 
the present social organization of our colleges 
with the realization of that purpose only to add 
emphasis to the statement of what that purpose 
is. Once get that clearly established in the mind 
of the country, and the means of realizing it will 
readily and quickly enough be found. The object 
of the college is intellectual discipline and moral 
enlightenment, and it is the immediate task of 
those who administer the colleges of the country 
to find the means and the organization by which 



2S WOODROW WILSON 

that object can be attained. Education is a proc- 
ess and, like all other processes, has its proper 
means and machinery. It does not consist in 
courses of study. It consists of the vital assimila- 
tion of knowledge, and the mode of life, for the 
college as for the individual, is nine parts of the 
digestion. 



ON GENERAL AND PROFES- 
SIONAL EDUCATION ' 

JOHN CAIRD 

I HAVE more than once on similar occasions 
adverted to a problem which is one of the most 
important, as it is one of the most difficult, in 
the science of education — namely, how to limit the 
range of study without producing intellectual 
narrowness — how to contract the field of thought 
without contracting the mind of the thinker. 
Limitation in the first sense we must have, if only 
from the vast and ever-increasing extent of the 
field of knowledge, and the more and more definite 
specialization of its various departments. Selec- 
tion on the part of the individual student is 
inevitable, and the plausible solution which occurs 
to many minds is that, seeing he cannot attempt 
to know everything, he should be guided in what 
he selects or omits by his individual aptitudes and 
by that which those aptitudes should determine 
— the special calling or career in life to which he 
is destined. 

^ An address delivered to the University of Glasgow on April 
13, 1897. 

29 



30 JOHN CAIRD 

The time has been when the notion of universal 
knowledge, the attempt to gain something more 
than a superficial acquaintance with all the various 
departments of human thought, was not so absurd 
as now it seems to be. When books were few and life 
more leisurely, when the vast domain of physical 
science had scarcely begun to be explored, and even 
its principles and methods were not understood ; 
when the sciences of philology and of historical 
criticism were yet in their infancy ; when political 
economy, sociology, and kindred sciences had not 
yet begun to be, it was possible, at least for some 
minds, to grapple not unsuccessfully with almost 
all the main subjects of human thought, and to 
become conversant with every important work in 
the whole range of literature. But we have fallen 
on other and different times. In our day it is 
impossible, not merely for the average student, 
but for even those of the greatest ability and ap- 
plication, to advance far in the work of acquiring 
knowledge without discovering that limitation and 
condensation are the conditions of success. En- 
cyclopedic knowledge can now be only another 
name for shallowness and superficiality. To at- 
tain the highest proficiency in any one branch of 
literature or science — or a fairly accurate ac- 
quaintance with two or three — the most ambitious 
student must be content to be comparatively 
ignorant of everything else, and to look on whole 



GENERAL EDUCATION 31 

departments of thought and research as for him 
practically proscribed. To a certain extent we 
must all be either specialists or amateurs ; we must 
make our choice between real and accurate, but 
limited, knowledge and mere dilettantism. 

Since, then, limitation is inevitable, on what 
principle shall we proceed in determining what is 
to be excluded and what retained .^^ The answer 
which to many seems to be beyond dispute is that 
the direction and limitation of our studies should 
from the very outset be determined by the use we 
are to make of them in our future life. If we 
cannot learn everything, should we not, in what 
we do learn, have regard mainly, if not exclusively, 
to the account to which our acquirements can be 
turned in the particular calling or profession to 
which we are destined.^ For most of us the exi- 
gencies of life are too pressing, the period of edu- 
cation too brief, to indulge in high-flown schemes 
of general culture. The result aimed at in our 
case cannot be merely to weave out of the raw 
material of mind the best possible specimen of 
educated intelligence that can be extracted from 
it, but to produce what would yield robust service 
in a particular line of work, make us capable men 
of business, clever, well-informed, and successful 
lawyers, doctors, divines. And this principle, it 
would be said, is becoming more and more recog- 
nized in our scheme of University education, in 



S2 JOHN CAIRD 

which not only do professional studies occupy a 
large and increasing space, but by the intro- 
duction of new subjects into the non-professional 
or arts curriculum, a wider option in accordance 
with individual aptitudes and the future vocation 
of the student has been introduced. 

But though there is no doubt a measure of truth 
in this popular and common-sense solution of the 
problem, there are one or two things to be con- 
sidered before we adopt it as a complete and 
adequate solution. Education cannot be mainly 
guided by professional aims, because, in the first 
place, education is needed to guide us in the selec- 
tion of a profession, to enable us to know what 
our special calling or profession is ; in the second 
place, to protect us against the narrowing influ- 
ence of all, even the so-called liberal professions; 
and, in the third place, to fit us for important 
social duties which lie outside of every man's pro- 
fessional work. 

A man's education cannot be determined alto- 
gether by regard to his future calling, seeing that 
it is one end of a good education to enable a man 
to find out what his true vocation is. Though it 
is often determined by accident, the selection of 
one's calling in life is at once one of the most 
important and one of the most difficult decisions 
which a man can form. Perhaps the fair portion 
of my auditory will forgive me for saying that it 



GENERAL EDUCATION S3 

is a choice as critical as that which determines a 
certain very close relationship in life; and I do 
not know whether it is not often made with as 
little reflection in the one case as in the other, and 
whether the consequences of a wrong choice are 
not as fatal and sometimes as irremediable. 

Our usefulness, success, and happiness in life 
depend unquestionably not a little on the measure 
in which we are in harmony with our place and 
work in the world. How then, the question arises, 
shall we find out what that place and work is ? For 
one thing this, I think it will be obvious, is a ques- 
tion the right answer to which implies a measure 
of judgment, forethought, reflection, and a range 
of information and intellectual experience such as 
presuppose and are the best results of a liberal 
education. - 

We do not come into the world each ticketed 
off^ by any outward mark for our special destina- 
tion. There may perhaps be some minds of such 
marked individuality as to betray at a very early 
period of life, there may be even infant prodigies, 
in whom the future poet or artist, the coming 
orator or statesman, can be discerned ere he has 
well left the nursery; but I fear that such fore- 
castings are in general due only to partial or 
parental observations, or to the biographer's tend- 
ency to read back the success of subsequent life 
into the incidents of childhood. To an impartial 



34 JOHN CAIRD 

observer, so far as mental characteristics go, all 
babies are very much alike. The inarticulate vocal 
manifestations of the future poet or musician are 
no more melodious than those of his tuneless 
brother. The incipient divine or philosopher does 
not foreshadow his career in a premature air of 
thoughtful gravity impressed on his countenance. 
Even when we come to the stage at which educa- 
tion begins — a few rare instances of precocity ex- 
cepted — individual aptitude is only very slightly 
discernible. It is not till a later, in the case of some 
of the best minds a much later period — ^viz., when 
the schoolboy stage is past, and that of student 
life has considerably advanced — that a youth can 
be said to be possessed of the materials by which 
the choice of a career can be wisely determined ; 
in other words, of that knowledge of the vari- 
ous branches of human thought, and that experi- 
mental knowledge of himself and of the direc- 
tion and limits of his powers, by which he be- 
comes capable of such a decision as to his future 
destiny. 

And so in the process of education there is room 
for an intermediate or transition stage between 
schoolboy discipline and strictly professional cul- 
ture. There are many minds in which the intellec- 
tual instincts and aptitudes are slow to betray 
themselves; and whether the latent genius be for 
letters or art or science or the industrial arts or 



GENERAL EDUCATION 35 

practical life or politics, it has been only after 
the rugged propaedeutic of school discipline has 
been long left behind, and the wonder and delight 
of the world of thought has become a growing ex- 
perience, and the free play of their powers under 
the discipline of a general, many-sided culture has 
begun to be felt, that they have come to discern 
where in the wide field of human activity lies their 
special vocation. 

Another reason, I have said, why in education 
we should not have regard exclusively or mainly 
to the student's future calling or profession, is 
that it is one great aim of education to protect 
us from the narrowing influence of all, even of the 
so-called liberal, professions. I must pass by this 
point, however, with only a single remark. The 
division of labor, as has been often pointed out, 
is subject to this drawback, that it tends to sacri- 
fice the full development of the individual to the 
exigencies of society. Professional or technical 
excellence would seem to be incompatible with sym- 
metry and width of culture. It often leads not 
merely to imperfect but also to unequal or one- 
sided development. This is most obvious in the 
case of manual or mechanical callings. Each trade 
or craft exercises constantly one member or fac- 
ulty or class of faculties, leaving the others com- 
paratively inactive — runs the whole physical 
energy into one limb or organ, and so distends 



36 JOHN CAIRD 

it to exaggerated dimensions, whilst the others are 
proportionately dwarfed or enfeebled. 

And the same is in a measure true of intellec- 
tual work. It is the tendency of the various pro- 
fessions to call into play a limited class of mental 
activities, to dam up the spiritual force that is in 
a man into a particular channel, and so leave the 
non-professional regions of his nature compara- 
tively dry and barren. Not only are most men 
apt to form an exaggerated estimate of the impor- 
tance of that which is their daily occupation, but 
they get the stamp of the shop impressed upon 
them, and carry their technical views and prin- 
ciples of judgment about with them wherever they 
go. There are many men one meets in society 
whose only alternative is to be technical or dull, 
to be dumb or learnedly loquacious. The narrow- 
ing tendency in question shows itself by engender- 
ing in the mind a host of class prejudices, by 
indisposing it for wide, impartial, tolerant views ; 
by depriving it of flexibility and the capacity to 
look at things from the point of view of other 
minds and the wider one of reason itself; finally, 
by breeding in us a professional selfishness — a 
tendency to view all measures and plans of im- 
provement, not by their bearing on the general 
welfare, but on the interests of a class, so that 
the first question is not — Is this opinion true, is 
this political or ecclesiastical reform just, will it 



GENERAL EDUCATION 37 

redress some crying wrong, hinder or help the 
national weal? but — ^Will it promote or hinder the 
dignity, powers and wealth of the order to which 
I belong? Is our craft in danger and the shrine 
of the great goddess Diana, whom all Asia and the 
world worship? 

I shall not prosecute this part of our subject 
any further; but enough, I think, has been said 
to show the importance of a general, as distin- 
guished from a special and professional training. 
As the pettiness of mind incident to life in a small 
circle is best corrected by foreign travel, so the 
remedy for intellectual narrowness is to be free in 
the wide world of thought. Converse with many 
cities and men disabuses the mind of the parochial 
standard of judgment. So the best cure for in- 
tellectual narrowness is the capacity to escape 
from the confined atmosphere of class or craft 
into the wide domain of letters, of science, of phi- 
losophy, of art. The physician or lawyer who is 
a classical scholar, or at any rate conversant with 
the treasures of either ancient or modern litera- 
ture, capable of finding purest enjoyment over 
the pages of its poets, historians, philosophers, is 
not likely to sink into a professional hack. The 
divine who is also a man of scientific or scholarly 
tastes is at least not likely to settle into the vulgar 
zealot, absorbing his soul in the petty politics of 
a sect or regarding its standards of orthodoxy as 



fr- 



SB JOHN CAIRD 

pillars round which the universe revolves. Be it 
yours, in this ancient home of learning, to seek 
after that preservative from narrowness which its 
studies afford. 

One of the most precious characteristics of such 
institutions as this is what I may venture to desig- 
nate the unworldliness of the spirit which per- 
vades them. It is surely no little gain for society 
that at the impressible stage of transition between 
boyhood and manhood young men should be made 
to breathe for a term of years an intellectual at- 
mosphere other and purer than that which but too 
often pervades the world on which they are about 
to enter — that they should for a time be members 
of a society in which the scramble for material 
gain, the fierce and often vulgarizing competition 
for worldly preferment, are as yet things un- 
known. To say this, implies no high-flown, senti- 
mental disparagement of the aims and ambitions 
that play so large a part in the world, and lend 
movement, activity, and interest to the drama of 
life. But it is not to the love of money or the 
love of social advancement, or even mainly to the 
love of honor and reputation, that we here appeal. 
There is a passion purer, loftier, and, in those who 
are capable of its inspiration, more intense than 
any of these — the love of truth, the passion for 
knowledge and intellectual attainment for its own 
sake; and it is our glory and boast that it is this 



GENERAL EDUCATION 39 

which constitutes the distinctive characteristic, the 
very breath and life of such places as this. 

Poor and vain would be the result of years you 
have passed in this place of study if, beyond the 
hope of future success in the world, beyond all 
ulterior aims and ambitions, there has not been 
awakened in you some breath of the genuine stu- 
dent's ardor, some sense of the worth and joy of 
intellectual effort for its own sake. On the other 
hand, if you have learned here, apart from the use 
of your studies as a preparation for your work 
in the world, to know with appreciative sympathy 
something of what the world's greatest minds have 
thought or its sweetest poets have sung, or of 
what in ancient or modern times its greatest 
workers have done for the progress of the race; 
or if there has been put into your hands the key 
by which science unlocks the secrets of nature, so 
that a treasure of mental resource will all through 
your future life be open to you ; still more, if you 
have gained or begun to gain here the precious 
possession of disciplined faculties, of a trained 
intelligence, strength of judgment, refinement of 
taste, and habits of application and self-command, 
— then, be your future career what it may — 
obscure, unrewarded, unknown to fame, or brilliant 
and successful as the most sanguine imagination 
can picture it^ — ^not in vain for you will these 
eventful years have passed. For you will have got 



40 JOHN CAIRD 

from them that which in all the future will furnish 
you with an escape from the pettiness and nar- 
rowness, the vulgarizing and wearing anxieties 
that beset most of us amidst our daily work ; that 
will provide you with new uses for wealth and 
property if they come to you, and, on the other 
hand, next to religion, will prove the truest con- 
solation of adversity and disappointment, of 
worldly care and sorrow. 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP* 

PAUL ELMER MORE 

Any one who has traveled much about the coun- 
try of recent years must have been impressed by 
the growing uneasiness of mind among thoughtful 
men. Whether in the smoking car, or the hotel 
corridor, or the college hall, everywhere, if you 
meet them off their guard and stripped of the 
optimism which we wear as a public convention, 
you will hear them saying in a kind of amazement, 
"What is to be the end of it all?" They are 
alarmed at the unsettlement of property and the 
difficulties that harass the man of moderate means 
in making provision for the future ; they are 
uneasy over the breaking up of the old laws of 
decorum, if not of decency, and over the unre- 
strained pursuit of excitement at any cost; they 
feel vaguely that in the decay of religion the bases 
of society have been somehow weakened. Now, 

* Reprinted through the generous permission of Paul 
Elmer More and the editor of The Unpopular Review, copy- 
right, 1914, by Henry Holt and Company. This essay was 
first printed in The Unpopular Review for July, 1914, and 
is to be included in the Ninth Series of the author's Shel- 
burne Essays. 

41 



42 PAUL ELMER MORE 

much of this sort of talk is as old as history, and 
has no special significance. We are prone to for- 
get that civilization has always been a tour de 
force, so to speak, a little hard-won area of order 
and self-subordination amidst a vast wilderness 
of anarchy and barbarism that are continually 
threatening to overrun their bounds. But that 
is equally no reason for over-confidence. Civiliza- 
tion is like a ship traversing an untamed sea. It 
is a more complex machine in our day, with com- 
mand of greater forces, and might seem corre- 
spondingly safer than in the era of sails. But 
fresh catastrophes have shown that the ancient 
perils of navigation still confront the largest ves- 
sel, when the crew loses its discipline or the officers 
neglect their duty ; and the analogy is not without 
its warning. 

Only a year after the sinking of the Titanic I 
was crossing the ocean, and it befell by chance that 
on the anniversary of that disaster we passed not 
very far from the spot where the proud ship lay 
buried beneath the waves. The evening was calm, 
and on the lea deck a dance had been hastily or- 
ganized to take advantage of the benign weather. 
Almost alone I stood for hours at the railing on 
the windward side, looking out over the rippling 
water where the moon had laid upon it a broad 
street of gold. Nothing could have been more 
peaceful; it was as if Nature were smiling upon 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 43 

earth in sympathy with the strains of music and 
the sound of laughter that reached me at intervals 
from the revelling on the other deck. Yet I could 
not put out of my heart an apprehension of some 
luring treachery in this scene of beauty — and cer- 
tainly the world can offer nothing more wonder- 
fully beautiful than the moon shining from the 
far East over a smooth expanse of water. Was 
it not in such a calm as this that the unsuspecting 
vessel, with its gay freight of human lives, had 
shuddered, and gone down, forever? I seemed to 
behold a symbol ; and there came into my mind the 
words we used to repeat at school, but are, I do 
not know just why, a little ashamed of to-day: 

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 
Humanity with all its fears, 
With all its hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! . . . 

Something like this, perhaps, is the feeling of 
many men — men by no means given to morbid 
gusts of panic — amid a society that laughs over- 
much in its amusement and exults in the very lust 
of change. Nor is their anxiety quite the same 
as that which has always disturbed the reflecting 
spectator. At other times the apprehension has 
been lest the combined forces of order might not 
be strong enough to withstand the ever-threatening 
inroads of those who envy barbarously and desire 



44 PAUL ELMER MORE 

recklessly ; whereas to-day the doubt is whether 
the natural champions of order themselves shall 
be found loyal to their trust, for they seem no 
longer to remember clearly the word of command 
that should unite them in leadership. Until they 
can rediscover some common ground of strength 
and purpose in the first principles of education 
and law and property and religion, we are in dan- 
ger of falling a prey to the disorganizing and vul- 
garizing domination of ambitions which should be 
the servants and not the masters of society. 

Certainly, in the sphere of education there is a 
growing belief that some radical reform is needed ; 
and this dissatisfaction is in itself wholesome. 
Boys come into college with no reading and with 
minds unused to the very practice of study; and 
they leave college, too often, in the same state of 
nature. There are even those, inside and outside 
of academic halls, who protest that our higher 
institutions of learning simply fail to educate at 
all. That is slander ; but in sober earnest, you 
will find few experienced college professors, apart 
from those engaged in teaching purely utilitarian 
or practical subjects, who are not convinced that 
the general relaxation is greater now than it was 
twenty years ago. It is of considerable signifi- 
cance that the two student essays which took the 
prizes offered by the Harvard Advocate in 1913 
were both on this theme. The first of them posed 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 45 

the question : " How can the leadership of the in- 
tellectual rather than the athletic student be fos- 
tered? " and was virtually a sermon on a text of 
President Lowell's : " No one in close touch with 
American education has failed to notice the lack 
among the mass of undergraduates of keen interest 
in their studies, and the small regard for scholarly 
attainment." 

Now, the Advocate prizeman has his specific 
remedy, and President Lowell has his, and other 
men propose other systems and restrictions ; but 
the evil is too deep-seated to be reached by any 
superficial scheme of honors or to be charmed 
away by insinuating appeals. The other day Mr. 
William F. McCombs, chairman of the National 
Committee which engineered a college president 
into the White House, gave this advice to our 
academic youth : " The college man must forget 
— or never let it creep into his head — that he's a 
highbrow. If it does creep in, he's out of politics." 
To which one might reply in Mr. McCombs's own 
dialect, that unless a man can make himself a force 
in politics (or at least in the larger life of the 
State) precisely by virtue of being a " highbrow," 
he had better spend his four golden years other- 
where than in college. There it is : the destiny of 
education is intimately bound up with the ques- 
tion of social leadership, and unless the college, 
as it used to be in the days when the religious 



46 PAUL ELMER MORE 

hierarchy it created was a real power, can be made 
once more a breeding-place for a natural aris- 
tocracy, it will inevitably degenerate into a school 
for mechanical apprentices or into a pleasure 
resort for the jeunesse doree {sc. the " gold 
coasters"). We must get back to a common un- 
derstanding of the office of education in the con- 
struction of society and must discriminate among 
the subjects that may enter into the curriculum 
by their relative value towards this end. 

A manifest condition is that education should 
embrace the means of discipline, for without dis- 
cipline the mind will remain inefficient just as 
surely as the muscles of the body, without exercise, 
will be left flaccid. That should seem to be a self- 
evident truth. Now it may be possible to derive 
a certain amount of discipline out of any study, 
but it is a fact, nevertheless, which cannot be 
gainsaid, that some studies lend themselves to this 
use more readily and effectively than others. You 
may, for instance, if by extraordinary luck you 
get the perfect teacher, make English literature 
disciplinary by the hard manipulation of ideas ; 
but in practice it almost inevitably happens that 
a course in English literature either degenerates 
into the dull memorizing of dates and names or, 
rising into the O Altitudo, evaporates in roman- 
tic gush over beautiful passages. This does not 
mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 4n 

from such a study, but it does preclude English 
literature generally from being made the backbone, 
so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The same 
may be said of French and German. The diffi- 
culties of these tongues in themselves and the 
effort required of us to enter into their spirit 
imply some degree of intellectual gymnastics, but 
scarcely enough for our purpose. Of the sciences 
it behooves one to speak circumspectly, and un- 
doubtedly mathematics and physics, at least, de- 
mand such close attention and such firm reasoning 
as to render them properly a part of any disci- 
plinary education. But there are good grounds 
for being sceptical of the effect of the non-mathe- 
matical sciences on the immature mind. Any 
one who has spent a considerable portion of his 
undergraduate time in a chemical laboratory, for 
example, as the present writer has done, and has 
the means of comparing the results of such ele- 
mentary and pottering experimentation with the 
mental grip required in the humanistic courses, 
must feel that the real training obtained therein 
was almost negligible. If I may draw further 
from my own observation, I must say frankly that, 
after dealing for a number of years with manu- 
scripts prepared for publication by college pro- 
fessors of the various faculties, I have been forced 
to the conclusion that science, in itself, is likely to 
leave the mind in a state of relative imbecility. 



48 PAUL ELMER MORE 

It is not that the writing of men who got their 
early drill too exclusively, or even predominantly, 
in the sciences lacks the graces of rhetoric — that 
would be comparatively a small matter — but such 
men in the majority of cases, even when treating 
subjects within their own field, show a singular 
inability to think clearly and consecutively, so 
soon as they are freed from the restraint of merely 
describing the process of an experiment. On the 
contrary, the manuscript of a classical scholar, 
despite the present dry-rot of philology, almost 
invariably gives signs of a habit of orderly and 
well-governed cerebration. 

Here, whatever else may be lacking, is discipline. 
The sheer difficulty of Latin and Greek, the highly 
organized structure of these languages, the need 
of scrupulous search to find the nearest equivalents 
for words that differ widely in their scope of 
meaning from their derivatives in any modem 
vocabulary, the effort of lifting one's self out of 
the familiar rut of ideas into so foreign a world, 
all these things act as a tonic exercise to the brain. 
And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the 
classics do actually surpass their unclassical rivals 
in any field where a fair test can be made. At 
Princeton, for instance. Professor West has shown 
this superiority by tables of achievements and 
grades, which he has published in the Educational 
Review for March, 1913 ; and a number of letters 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 49 

from various parts of the country, printed in the 
Nation, tell the same story in striking fashion. 
Thus, a letter from Wesleyan (September 7, 
1911) gives statistics to prove that the classical 
students in that university outstrip the others 
in obtaining all sorts of honors, commonly even 
honors in the sciences. Another letter (May 8, 
1913) shows that in the first semester in English 
at the University of Nebraska the percentage of 
delinquents among those who entered with four 
years of Latin was below 7 ; among those who had 
three years of Latin and one or two of a modern 
language the percentage rose to 15 ; two years of 
Latin and two years of a modern language, 30 per 
cent. ; one year or less of Latin and from two to 
four years of a modern language, 35 per cent. 
And in the Nation of April 23, 1914, Profes- 
sor Arthur Gordon Webster, the eminent physi- 
cist of Clark University, after speaking of 
the late B. O. Peirce's early drill and life-long 
interest in Greek and Latin, adds these signifi- 
cant words : " Many of us still believe that such 
a training makes the best possible foundation for 
a scientist." There is reason to think that this 
opinion is daily gaining ground among those who 
are zealous that the prestige of science should be 
maintained by men of the best calibre. 

The disagreement in this matter would no doubt 
be less, were it not for an ambiguity in the mean- 



50 PAUL ELMER MORE 

ing of the word " efficient " itself. There is a 
kind of efficiency in managing men, and there also 
is an intellectual efficiency, properly speaking, 
which is quite a different faculty. The former is 
more likely to be found in the successful engineer 
or business man than in the scholar of secluded 
habits, and because often such men of affairs re- 
ceived no discipline at college in the classics the 
argument runs that utilitarian studies are as dis- 
ciplinary as the humanistic. But efficiency of this 
kind is not an academic product at all, and is 
commonly developed, and should be developed, in 
the school of the world. It comes from dealing 
with men in matters of large physical moment, and 
may exist with a mind utterly undisciplined in the 
stricter sense of the word. We have had more 
than one illustrious example in recent years of 
men capable of dominating their fellows, let us say 
in financial transactions, who yet, in the grasp of 
first principles and in the analysis of consequences, 
have shown themselves to be as inefficient as 
children. 

Probably, however, few men who have had ex- 
perience in education will deny the value of disci- 
pline to the classics, even though they hold that 
other studies, less costly from the utilitarian point 
of view, are equally educative in this respect. But 
it is further of prime importance, even if such an 
equality, or approach to equality, were granted. 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 51 

that we should select one group of studies and 
unite in making it the core of the curriculum for 
the great mass of undergraduates. It is true in 
education as in other matters that strength comes 
from union and weakness from division, and if 
educated men are to work together for a common 
end they must have a common range of ideas, with 
a certain solidarity in their way of looking at 
things. As matters actually are, the educated 
man feels terribly his isolation under the scatter- 
ing of intellectual pursuits, yet too often lacks 
the courage to deny the strange popular fallacy 
that there is virtue in sheer variety and that som.e- 
how well-being is to be struck out from the clash- 
ing of miscellaneous interests rather than from 
concentration. In one of his annual reports some 
years ago President Eliot, of Harvard, observed 
from the figures of registration that the majority 
of students still at that time believed the best 
form of education for them was in the old human- 
istic courses, and therefore, he argued, the other 
courses should be fostered. There was never per- 
haps a more extraordinary syllogism since the 
argal of Shakespeare's grave-digger.^ I quote 
from memory, and may slightly misrepresent the 
actual statement of the influential " educational- 
ist," but the spirit of his words, as indeed of his 
practice, is surely as I give it. And the working 

^ Hamlet, Act V, Sc. i. 



52 PAUL ELMER MORE 

of this spirit is one of the main causes of the 
curious fact that scarcely any other class of 
men in social intercourse feel themselves, in their 
deeper concerns, more severed one from another 
than those very college professors who ought to 
be united in the battle for educational leadership. 
This estrangement is sometimes carried to an ex- 
treme almost ludicrous. I remember once in a 
small but advanced college the consternation that 
was awakened when an instructor in philosophy 
went to a colleague — both of them now associates 
in a large university — for information in a ques- 
tion of biology. " What business has he with such 
matters," said the irate biologist ; " let him stick 
to his last, and teach philosophy — if he can ! " 
That was a polite jest, you will say. Perhaps; 
but not entirely. Philosophy is indeed taught in 
one lecture hall, and biology in another, but of 
conscious effort to make of education an harmoni- 
ous driving force there is next to nothing. And 
as the teachers, so are the taught. 

Such criticism does not imply that advanced 
work in any of the branches of human knowledge 
should be curtailed; but it does demand that, as 
a background to the professional pursuits, there 
should be a common intellectual training through 
which all students should pass, acquiring thus a 
single body of ideas and images in which they 
could always meet as brother initiates. 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 53 

We shall, then, make a long step forward when 
we determine that in the college, as distinguished 
from the university, it is better to have the great 
mass of men, whatever may be the waste in a few 
unmalleable minds, go through the discipline of a 
single group of studies — with, of course, a con- 
siderable freedom of choice in the outlying field. 
And it will probably appear in experience that 
the only practicable group to select is the classics, 
wdth the accompaniment of philosophy and the 
mathematical sciences. Latin and Greek are, at 
least, as disciplinary as any other subjects; and 
if it can be further shown that they possess a spe- 
cific power of correction for the more disintegrat- 
ing tendencies of the age, it ought to be clear that 
their value as instruments of education outweighs 
the service of certain other studies which may 
seem to be more immediately serviceable. 

For it will be pretty generally agreed that effi- 
ciency of the individual scholar and unity of the 
scholarly class are, properly, only the means to 
obtain the real end of education, which is social 
efficiency. The only way, in fact, to make the dis- 
cipline demanded by a severe curriculum and the 
sacrifice of particular tastes required for unity 
seem worth the cost is to persuade men that the 
resulting form of education both meets a present 
and serious need of society and promises to serve 
those individuals who desire to obtain society's 



54 PAUL ELMER MORE 

fairer honors. Mr. McCombs, speaking for the 
" practical " man, declares that there is no place 
in politics for the intellectual aristocrat. A good 
many of us believe that unless the very reverse of 
this is true, unless the educated man can somehow, 
by virtue of his education, make of himself a gov- 
ernor of the people in the larger sense, and even 
to some extent in the narrow political sense, unless 
the college can produce a hierarchy of character 
and intelligence which shall in due measure per- 
form the office of the discredited oligarchy of 
birth, we had better make haste to divert our 
enormous collegiate endowments into more useful 
channels. 

And here I am glad to find confirmation of my 
belief in the stalwart old Boke Named the Got)^ 
ernour, published by Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531, 
the first treatise on education in the English 
tongue and still, after all these years, one of the 
wisest. It is no waste of time to take account 
of the theory held by the humanists when study 
at Oxford and Cambridge was shaping itself for 
its long service in giving to the oligarchic govern- 
ment of Great Britain whatever elements it pos- 
sessed of true aristocracy. Elyot's book is equally 
a treatise on the education of a gentleman and on 
the ordinance of government, for, as he says else- 
where, he wrote " to instruct men in such virtues 
as shall be expedient for them which shall have 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 55 

authority in a weal public." I quote from various 
parts of his work with some abridgment, retain- 
ing the quaint spelling of the original, and I beg 
the reader not to skip, however long the citation 
may appear : 

Beholde also the ordre that god hath put generally 
in al his creatures, begynning at the moste inferiour 
or base, and assendynge upwarde; so that in euery 
thyng is ordre, and without ordre may be nothing 
stable or permanent; and it may nat be called ordre, 
excepte it do contayne in it degrees, high and base, 
accordynge to the merite or estimation of the thyng 
that is ordred. And therfore hit appereth that god 
gyueth nat to euery man like gyftes of grace, or of 
nature, but to some more, some lesse, as it liketh his 
diuine maiestie. For as moche as understandyng is 
the most excellent gyfte that man can receiue in his 
creation, it is liherfore congruent, and accordynge that 
as one excelleth an other in that influence, as therby 
beinge next to the similitude of his maker, so shulde 
the astate of his persone be auanced in degree or 
place where understandynge may profite. Suche 
oughte to be set in a more highe place than the 
residue where they may se and also be sene; that by 
the beames of theyr excellent witte, shewed throughe 
the glasse of auctorite, other of inferiour under- 
standynge may be directed to the way of vertue and 
commodious liuynge. . . . 

Thus I conclude that nobilitie is nat after the vul- 
gare opinion of men, but is only the prayse and sur- 



56 PAUL ELMER MORE 

name of vertue; whiche the lenger it continueth in a 
name or lignage, the more is nobilitie extolled and 
meruailed at. . . . 

If thou be a gouernour^ or haste ouer other souer- 
aygntie^ knowe thy selfe. Knowe that the name of 
a soueraigne or ruler without actuall gouernaunce is 
but a shadowe_, that gouernaunce standeth nat by 
wordes onely^ but principally by acte and example; 
that by example of gouernours men do rise or falle 
in vertue or vice. Ye shall knowe all way* your selfe, 
if for affection or motion ye do speke or do nothing 
unworthy the immortalitie and moste precious nature 
of your soule. . . . 

In semblable maner the inferior persone or subiecte 
aught to consider, that all be it he in the substaunce 
of soule and body be equall with his superior, yet for 
als moche as the powars and qualities of the soule 
and body, with the disposition of reason, be nat in 
euery man equall, therfore god ordayned a diuersitie 
or pre-eminence in degrees to be amonge men for the 
necessary derection and preseruation of them in con- 
formitie of lyuinge. . . . 

Where all thynge is commune, there lacketh ordre; 
and where ordre lacketh, there all thynge is odiouse 
and uncomly. 

Such is the goal which the grave Sir Thomas 
pointed out to the noble youth of his land at the 
beginning of England's greatness, and such, within 
the bounds of human frailty, has been the ideal 
even until now which the two universities have 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 57 

held before them. Naturally the method of train- 
ing prescribed in the sixteenth century for the 
attainment of this goal is antiquated in some of 
its details, but it is no exaggeration, nevertheless, 
to speak of the Boke Named the Governour as 
the very Magna Charta of our education. The 
scheme of the humanist might be described in a 
word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the 
imagination to the end that the student may be- 
hold, as it were in one sublime vision, the whole 
scale of being in its range from the lowest to the 
highest under the divine decree of order and sub- 
ordination, without losing sight of the immutable 
veracity at the heart of all development, which " is 
only the praise and surname of virtue." This was 
no new vision, nor has it ever been quite forgotten. 
It was the whole meaning of religion to Hooker, 
from whom it passed into all that is best and least 
ephemeral in the Anglican Church. It was the 
basis, more modestly expressed, of Blackstone's 
conception of the British Constitution and of lib- 
erty under law. It was the kernel of Burke's 
theory of statecraft. It is the inspiration of the 
sublimer science, which accepts the hypothesis of 
evolution as taught by Darwin and Spencer, yet 
bows in reverence before the unnamed and incom- 
mensurable force lodged as a mystical purpose 
within the unfolding universe. It was the wisdom 
of that child of Stratford who, building better 



58 PAUL ELMER MORE 

than he knew, gave to our literature its deepest 
and most persistent note. If anywhere Shake- 
speare seems to speak from his heart and to utter 
his own philosophy, it is in the person of Ulysses 
in that strange satire of life as " still wars and 
lechery " which forms the theme of Troilus and 
Cressida. Twice in the course of the play Ulysses 
moralizes on the causes of human evil. Once it 
is in an outburst against the devastations of 
disorder : 

Take but degree away, untune that string, 

And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets 

In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters 

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores. 

And make a sop of all this solid globe: 

Strength should be lord of imbecility. 

And the rude son should strike his father dead: 

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong. 

Between whose endless jar justice resides. 

Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 

Then every thing includes itself in power, 

Power into will, will into appetite. 

And, in the same spirit, the second tirade of 
Ulysses is charged with mockery at the vanity 
of the present and at man's usurpation of 
time as the destroyer instead of the preserver of 
continuity : 

For time is like a fashionable host 
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand. 
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly. 
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles. 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 69 

And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek 

Remuneration for the thing it was; 

For beauty, wit, 

High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service. 

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all 

To envious and calumniating time. 



To have made this vision of the higher imagina- 
tion a true part of our self-knowledge, in such 
fashion that the soul is purged of envy for what 
is distinguished and we feel ourselves fellows with 
the preserving, rather than the destroying, forces 
of time, is to be raised into the nobility of the in- 
tellect. To hold this knowledge in a mind trained 
to fine efficiency and confirmed by faithful com- 
radeship is to take one's place with the rightful 
governors of the people. Nor is there any narrow 
or invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, 
which differs in this free hospitality from an oli- 
garchy of artificial prescription. The more its 
membership is enlarged, the greater is its power 
and the more secure are the privileges of each 
individual. Yet, if not exclusive, an academic 
aristocracy must by its very nature be exceedingly 
jealous of any levelling process which would shape 
education to the needs of the intellectual prole- 
tariat and so diminish its own ranks. It cannot 
admit that, if education is once levelled down- 
wards, the whole body of men will of themselves 
gradually raise the level to the higher range ; for 



60 PAUL ELMER MORE 

its creed declares that elevation must come from 
leadership rather than from self-motion of the 
mass. It will therefore be opposed to any scheme 
of studies which relaxes discipline or destroys in- 
tellectual solidarity. It will look with suspicion 
on any system which turns out half-educated men 
with the same diplomas as the fully educated, 
thinking that such methods of slurring differences 
are likely to do more harm by discouraging the 
ambition to attain what is distinguished than good 
by spreading Avide a thin veneer of culture. In 
particular it will distrust the present huge over- 
growth of courses in government and sociology, 
which send men into the world skilled in the ma- 
chinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened 
to the immediate demands of special groups, but 
with no genuine training of the imagination and 
no understanding of the longer problems of hu- 
manity, with no hold on the past, " amidst so vast 
a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concen- 
tre their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to 
preserve them from being blown about by every 
wind of fashionable doctrine." It will set itself 
against any regular subjection of the " fierce spirit 
of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and 
the very charter of aristocracy, to the sullen 
spirit of equality, which proceeds from envy in the 
baser sort of democracy. It will regard the 
character of education and the disposition of the 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 61 

curriculum as a question of supreme importance; 
for its motto is always, abeunt studia in mores} 

Now this aristocratic principle has, so to speak, 
its everlasting embodiment in Greek literature, 
from whence it was taken over into Latin and 
transmitted, with much mingling of foreign and 
even contradictory ideas, to the modern world. 
From Homer to the last runnings of the Hellenic 
spirit you will find it taught by every kind of 
precept and enforced by every kind of example; 
nor was Shakespeare writing at hazard, but under 
the instinctive guidance of genius, when he put his 
aristocratic creed into the mouth of the hero who 
to the end remained for the Greeks the personifica- 
tion of their peculiar wisdom. In no other poetry 
of the world is the law of distinction, as springing 
from a man's perception of his place in the great 
hierarchy of privilege and obligation from the 
lowest human being up to the Olympian gods, so 
copiously and magnificently set forth as in Pin- 
dar's Odes of Victory. And Aeschylus was the 
first dramatist to see with clear vision the primacy 
of the intellect in the law of orderly development, 
seemingly at variance with the divine immutable 
will of Fate, yet finally in mysterious accord with 
it. When the philosophers of the later period 
came to the creation of systematic ethics they had 
only the task of formulating what was already 

^ Studies pass into habits. 



62 PAUL ELMER MORE 

latent in the poets and historians of their land; 
and it was the recollection of the fulness of such 
instruction in the Nicomachean Ethics ^ and the 
Platonic Dialogues, with their echo in the Offlcia 
of Cicero, as if in them were stored up all the 
treasures of antiquity, that raised our Sir Thomas 
into wondering admiration : 

Lorde god, what incomparable swetnesse of wordes 
and mater shall he finde in the saide warkes of Plato 
and Cicero; wherin is ioyned granitic with dilecta- 
tion^ excellent wysedome with diuine eloquence^ abso- 
lute vertue with pleasure incredible^ and euery place 
is so farced [crowded] with profitable counsaile, 
ioyned with honestie, that those thre bokes be almoste 
sufficient to make a perfecte and excellent gouernour. 

There is no need to dwell on this aspect of the 
classics. He who cares to follow their full work- 
ing in this direction, as did our English humanist, 
may find it exhibited in Plato's political and eth- 
ical scheme of self-development or in Aristotle's 
ideal of the Golden Mean which combines mag- 
nanimity with moderation, and elevation with self- 
knowledge. If a single word were used to describe 
the character and state of life upheld by Plato and 
Aristotle, as spokesmen of their people, it would 
be eleutheria, liberty: the freedom to cultivate the 
higher part of a man's nature — his intellectual 
prerogative, his desire of truth, his refinements of 
^ A treatise written by Aristotle. 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 6S 

taste — and to hold the baser part of himself in 
subjection; the freedom also, for its own perfec- 
tion, and indeed for its very existence, to impose 
an outer conformity to, or at least respect for, 
the laws of this inner government on others who 
are of themselves ungoverned. Such liberty is the 
ground of true distinction ; it implies the opposite 
of an equalitarianism which reserves its honors 
and rewards for those who attain a bastard kind 
of distinction by the cunning of leadership with- 
out departing from common standards, for the 
demagogues, that is, who rise by flattery. But it 
is, on the other hand, by no means dependent on the 
artificial distinctions of privilege, and is peculiarly 
adapted to an age whose appointed task must be to 
create a natural aristocracy as a tna media between 
an equalitarian democracy and a prescriptive oli- 
garchy or plutocracy. It is a notable fact that, as 
the real hostility to the classics in the present day 
arises from an instinctive suspicion of them as 
standing in the way of a downward-levelling me- 
diocrity, so, at other times, they have fallen under 
displeasure for their veto on a contrary excess. 
Thus, in his savage attack on the Commonwealth, 
to which he gave the significant title Behemoth, 
Hobbes lists the reading of classical history among 
the chief causes of the rebellion. " There were," 
he says, " an exceeding great number of men of the 
better sort, that had been so educated as that in 



64 PAUL ELMER MORE 

their youth, having read the books written by fa- 
mous men of the ancient Grecian and Roman com- 
monwealths concerning their poHty and great ac- 
tions, in which books the popular government was 
extolled by that glorious name of liberty, and 
m.onarchy disgraced by the name of tyranny, they 
became thereby in love with their forms of govern- 
ment ; and out of these men were chosen the great- 
est part of the House of Commons ; or if they were 
not the greatest part, yet by advantage of their 
eloquence were always able to sway the rest." To 
this charge Hobbes returns again and again, even 
declaring that " the universities have been to this 
nation as the Wooden Horse was to the Trojans." 
And the uncompromising monarchist of the Levia- 
than,^ himself a classicist of no mean attainments, 
as may be known by his translation of Thucydides, 
was not deceived in his accusation. The tyranni- 
cides of Athens and Rome, the Aristogeitons ^ and 
Brutuses and others, were the heroes by whose 
example the leaders of the French Revolution 
(rightly, so far as they did not fall into the op- 
posite, equalitarian excess) were continually jus- 
tifying their acts: 

There Brutus starts and stares by midnight taper, 
Who all the day enacts — a woollen-draper. 

^ A work written by Hobbes. 

^ Two Athenian youths, Aristogeiton and Harmodius, 
killed the tyrant Hipparchus in 514 b.c. 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 65 

And again, in the years of the Risorgimento/ more 
than one of the champions of Itahan liberty went 
to death with those great names on their lips. 

So runs the law of order and right subordina- 
tion. But if the classics offer the best service to 
education by inculcating an aristocracy of intel- 
lectual distinction, they are equally effective in 
enforcing the similar lesson of time. It is a true 
saying of our ancient humanist that " the longer 
it continueth in a name or lineage, the more is 
nobility extolled and marvelled at." It is true 
because in this way our imagination is working 
with the great conservative law of growth. What- 
ever may be in theory our democratic distaste for 
the insignia of birth, we cannot get away from the 
fact that there is a certain honor of inheritance 
and that we instinctively pay homage to one who 
represents a noble name. There is nothing really 
illogical in this, for, as an English statesman has 
put it, " the past is one of the elements of our 
power." He is the wise democrat who, with no 
opposition to such a decree of Nature, endeavors 
to control its operation by expecting noble service 
where the memory of nobility abides. When last 
year Oxford bestowed Its highest honor on an 
American,^ distinguished not only for his own pub- 

1 A term applied to the events that culminated in the 
liberation and unification of Italy in 1870. 

2 Charles Francis Adams. 



66 PAUL ELMER MORE 

lie acts but for the great tradition embodied in his 
name, the Orator of the University did not omit 
this legitimate appeal to the imagination, singu- 
larly appropriate in its academic Latin : 

. , . Statim succurrit animo antiqua ilia Romae 
condicio^ cum non tam propter singulos cives quara 
propter singulas gentes nomen Romanum floreret. 
Cum enim civis alicujus et avum et proavum prin- 
cipes civitatis ess'e creatos, cum patrem legationis 
munus apud aulam Britannicam summa cum laude 
esse exsecutum cognovimus ; cum denique ipsum per 
totum helium stipendia equo meritum^ summa pericula 
" Pulcra pro Libertate " ausum, . . . Romanae 
alicujus gentis — Brutorum vel Deciorum — annales 
evolvere videmur, qui testimonium adhihent " fortes 
creari fortibus/' et majorum exemplis et imaginibus? 
nepotes ad virtutem accendi.^ 

^ One's mind reverts inevitably to that ancient state of 
affairs in Rome, when the Roman name was illustrious not 
only through individual citizens, but also through particular 
families. For when we consider that a man's grandfather 
and great-grandfather held the highest ofl&ce in a state, and 
that his father represented his country with the highest 
distinction at the court of Great Britain, and when we 
remember, finally, that the man himself gave all his strength 
to military service throughout a war, incurring extreme 
perils "For the sake of Sweet Liberty," ... in these 
recollections we seem to be unrolling the annals of some 
Roman family — of the Bruti or the Decii— annals bearing 
witness to the fact that " the strong are born to the strong," 
and that by the examples and traditions of their ancestors, 
the descendants are incited to distinguished achievement, 



ACADExVIIC LEADERSHIP 67 

Is there any man so dull of soul as not to be 
stirred by that enumeration of civic services zeal- 
ously inherited ; or is there any one so envious 
of the past as not to believe that such memories 
should be honored in the present as an incentive 
to noble emulation? 

Well, we cannot all of us count Presidents and 
Ambassadors among our ancestors/ but we can, 
if we will, in the genealogy of the inner life enroll 
ourselves among the adopted sons of a family in 
comparison with which the Bruti and Decii of old 
and the Adamses of to-day are veritable new men. 
We can see what defence against the meaner 
depredations of the world may be drawn from the 
pride of birth, when, as it sometimes happens, the 
obligation of a great past is kept as a contract 
with the present ; shall we forget to measure the 
enlargement and elevation of mind which ought to 
come to a man who has made himself the heir of 
the ancient Lords of Wisdom? "To one small 
people," as Sir Henry Maine ^ has said, in words 
often quoted, " it was given to create the prin- 

iThe great-grandfather of Charles Francis Adams was 
John Adams (1735-1826), second president of the United 
States; his grandfather was John Quincy Adams (1767- 
1848), sixth president of the United States; and his father 
was Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886), Minister to Great 
Britain from 1861 to 1868. 

* Sir Henry James Sumner Maine (1822-1888), an eminent 
jurist and writer. 



68 PAUL ELMER MORE 

ciple of Progress. That people was the Greek. 
Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves 
in this world which is not Greek in its origin." 
That is a hard saying, but scarcely exaggerated. 
Examine the records of our art and our science, 
our philosophy and the enduring element of our 
faith, our statecraft and our notion of liberty, and 
you will find that they all go back for their in- 
spiration to that one small people, and strike their 
roots into the soil of Greece. What we have added, 
it is well to know; but he is the aristocrat of the 
mind who can display a diploma from the schools 
of the Academy ^ and the Lyceum ^ and from the 
Theatre of Dionysus.^ What tradition of ances- 
tral achievement in the Senate or on the field of 
battle shall broaden a man's outlook and elevate 
his will equally with the consciousness that his way 
of thinking and feeling has come down to him by 
so long and honorable a descent, or shall so con- 
firm him in his better judgment against the ephem- 
eral and vulgarizing solicitations of the hour.'* 
Other men are creatures of the visible moment; he 
is a citizen of the past and of the future. And 
such a charter of citizenship it is the first duty of 
the college to provide. 

^ A public garden near ancient Athens, where Plato dis- 
coursed. 

^ A park in ancient Athens, frequented by Aristotle and 
his disciples. 

' The oldest public theatre in Athens. 



ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP 69 

I have limited myself in these pages to a dis- 
cussion of what may be called the public side of 
education, considering the classics in their power 
to mould character and to foster sound leadership 
in a society much given to drifting. Of the inex- 
haustible joy and consolation they afford to the 
individual, only he can have full knowledge who 
has made the writers of Greece and Rome his 
friends and counsellors through many vicissitudes 
of life. It is related of Sainte-Beuve, who, accord- 
ing to Renan, read everything and remembered 
everything, that one could observe a peculiar 
serenity on his face whenever he came down from 
his study after reading a book of Homer. The 
cost of learning the language of Homer is not 
small; but so are all fair things difficult, as the 
Greek proverb runs, and the reward in this case 
is precious beyond estimation. Yet we need not, 
in our zeal, forget another proverb from Greece, 
with its spirit of " accommodation " — that the half 
is sometimes greater than the whole. Even a 
moderate acquaintance with the language, helped 
out by good translations, will go a surprising 
length towards keeping a man, amid the exactions 
of a professional or otherwise busy life, in posses- 
sion of the heritage to which our age has grown 
so perilously indifferent. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR" 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Mr. President and Gentlemen, 

I GREET you on the recommencement of our lit- 
erary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, 
perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet 
for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of 
histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient 
Greeks ; for parliaments of love and poesy, like 
the Troubadours ; nor for the advancement of sci- 
ence, like our contemporaries in the British and 
European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has 
been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the 
love of letters amongst a people too busy to give 
to letters any more. As such it is precious as the 
sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the 
time is already come when it ought to be, and will 
be, something else ; when the sluggard intellect of 
this continent will look from under its iron lids 
and fill the postponed expectation of the world 
with something better than the exertions of me- 
chanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long 

^ An oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
ciety, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837. 

70 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 71 

apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, 
draws to a close. The millions that around us are 
rushing into life cannot always be fed on the sere 
remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions 
arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. 
Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead 
in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, 
which now flames in our zenith, astronomers an- 
nounce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thou- 
sand years? 

In this hope I accept the topic which not only 
usage but the nature of our association seem to 
prescribe to this day, — the American Scholar. 
Year by year we come up hither to read one more 
chapter of his biography. Let us inquire what 
light new days and events have thrown on his char- 
acter and his hopes. 

It is one of those fables which out of an un- 
known antiquity convey an unlooked-for wisdom, 
that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into 
men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just 
as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to 
answer its end. 

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and 
sublime; that there is One Man, — present to all 
particular men only partially, or through one fac- 
ulty ; and that you must take the whole society to 
find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a 
professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is 



72' RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, 
and soldier. In the divided or social state these 
functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of 
whom aims to do his stint of the j oint work, whilst 
each other performs his. The fable implies that 
the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes 
return from his own labor to embrace all the other 
laborers. But, unfortunately, this original unit, 
this fountain of power, has been so distributed to 
multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and 
peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and can- 
not be gathered. The state of society is one in 
which the members have suffered amputation from 
the trunk, and strut about so many walking mon- 
sters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, 
but never a man. 

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into 
many things. The planter, who is Man sent out 
into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by 
any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He 
sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, 
and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the 
farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal 
worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of 
his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The 
priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute- 
book ; the mechanic a machine ; the sailor a rope of 
the ship. 

In this distribution of functions the scholar is 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 7S 

the delegated intellect. In the right state he is 
Man Thinldng. In the degenerate state, when 
the victim of society, he tends to become a mere 
thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's 
thinking. 

In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the the- 
ory of his office is contained. Him Nature solicits 
with all her placid, all her monitory pictures ; him 
the past instructs ; him the future invites. Is not 
indeed every man a student, and do not all things 
exist for the student's behoof .^^ And, finally, is not 
the true scholar the only true master.? But the 
old oracle said, " All things have two handles : be- 
ware of the wrong one." In life, too often, the 
scholar errs with mankind and forfeits his privi- 
lege. Let us see him in his school, and consider 
him in reference to the main influences he receives. 

I. The first in time and the first in importance 
of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. 
Every day, the sun ; and, after sunset. Night and 
her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass 
grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, 
beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all 
men whom this spectacle most engages. He must 
settle its value in his mind. What is nature to 
him? There is never a beginning, there is never 
an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web 
of God, but always circular power returning into 



74* RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose 
beginning, whose ending, he never can find, — so 
entire, so boundless. Far too as her splendors 
shine, system on system shooting like rays, up- 
ward, downward, without centre, without circum- 
ference, — in the mass and in the particle. Nature 
hastens to render account of herself to the mind. 
Classification begins. To the young mind every 
thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, 
it finds how to join two things and see in them one 
nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, 
tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it 
goes on tying things together, diminishing anom- 
alies, discovering roots running under ground 
whereby contrary and remote things cohere and 
flower out from one stem. It presently learns that 
since the dawn of history there has been a constant 
accumulation and classifying of facts. But what 
is classification but the perceiving that these ob- 
jects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but 
have a law which is also a law of the human mind.f* 
The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure 
abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of 
planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions 
and intelligible method throughout matter; and 
science is nothing but the finding of analogy, iden- 
tity, in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul 
sits down before each refractory fact; one after 
another reduces all strange constitutions, all new 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 75 

powers, to their class and their law, and goes on 
forever to animate the last fibre of organization, 
the outskirts of nature, by insight. 

Thus to him, to this schoolboy under the bend- 
ing dome of day, is suggested that he and it pro- 
ceed from one root ; one is leaf and one is flower ; 
relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And 
what is that root? Is not that the soul of his 
soul? A thought too bold; a dream too wild. Yet 
when this spiritual light shall have revealed the 
law of more earthly natures, — when he has learned 
to worship the soul, and to see that the natural 
philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings 
of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an 
ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming cre- 
ator. He shall see that nature is the opposite of 
the soul, answering to it part for part. One is 
seal and one is print7 Its beauty is the beauty of 
his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his 
own mind. Nature then becomes to him the 
measure of his attainments. So much of nature as 
he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does 
he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient pre- 
cept, " Know thyself," and the modern precept, 
" Study nature," become at last one maxim. 

II. The next great influence into the spirit of 
the scholar is the mind of the Past, — in whatever 
form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, 



76 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of 
the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get 
at the truth, — learn the amount of this influence 
more conveniently, — by considering their value 
alone. 

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of 
the first age received into him the world around; 
brooded thereon ; gave it the new arrangement of 
his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into 
him life; it went out from him truth. It came 
to him short-lived actions ; it went out from him 
immortal thoughts. It came to him business ; it 
went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it 
is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It 
now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Pre- 
cisely in proportion to the depth of mind from 
which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does 
it sing. 

Or, I might say, it depends on how far the proc- 
ess had gone, of transmuting life into truth. In 
proportion to the completeness of the distillation, 
so will the purity and imperishableness of the prod- 
uct be. But none is quite perfect. As no air- 
pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, 
so neither can any artist entirely exclude the con- 
ventional, the local, the perishable from his book, 
or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as 
efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to 
contemporaries, or rather to the second age. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 77 

Each age, it is found, must write its own books ; or 
rather, each generation for the next succeeding. 
The books of an older period will not fit this. 

Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacred- 
ness which attaches to the act of creation, the act 
of thought, is transferred to the record. The poet 
chanting was felt to be a divine man : henceforth 
the chant is divine also. The writer was a just 
and wise spirit : henceforward it is settled the book 
is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into wor- 
ship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes 
noxious : the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and 
perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to 
the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, 
having once received this book, stands upon it, and 
makes an outcry if it is disparaged. Colleges are 
built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, 
not by Man Thinking ; by men of talent, that is, 
who start wrong, who set out from accepted dog- 
mas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek 
young men grow up in libraries, believing it their 
duty to accept the views which Cicero, which 
Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that 
Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in 
libraries when they wrote these books. 

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the 
bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, who 
value books, as such ; not as related to nature and 
the human constitution, but as making a sort of 



78 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence 
the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bib- 
liomaniacs of all degrees. 

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, 
among the worst. What is the right use? What 
is the one end which all means go to effect? They 
are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never 
see a book than to be warped by its attraction 
clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite 
instead of a system. The one thing in the world, 
of value, is the active soul. This every man is 
entitled to ; this every man contains within him, 
although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet 
unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and 
utters truth, or creates. In this action it is 
genius ; not the privilege of here and there a fav- 
orite, but the sound estate of every man. In its 
essence it is progressive. The book, the college, 
the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop 
with some past utterance of genius. This is good, 
say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me down. 
They look backward and not forward. But genius 
looks forward : the eyes of man are set in his fore- 
head, not in his hindhead : man hopes : genius 
creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man 
create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his ; 
— cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet 
flame. There are creative manners, there are crea- 
tive actions, and creative words ; manners, actions, 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 79 

words, that is, indicative of no custom or author- 
ity, but springing spontaneous from the mind's 
own sense of good and fair. 

On the other part, instead of being its own 
seer, let it receive from another mind its truth, 
though it were in torrents of light, without periods 
of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery, and a fatal 
disservice is done. Genius is always sufficiently the 
enemy of genius by over-influence. The literature 
of every nation bears me witness. The English 
dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two 
hundred years. 

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so 
it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must 
not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for 
the scholar's idle times. When he can read God 
directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in 
other men's transcripts of their readings. But 
when the intervals of darkness come, as come they 
must, — when the sun is hid and the stars with- 
draw their shining, — we repair to the lamps which 
were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to 
the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that 
we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, " A 
fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful." 

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure 
we derive from the best books. They impress us 
with the conviction that one nature wrote and the 
same reads. We read the verses of one of the 



80 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

great English poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of 
Dryden, with the most modern joy, — with a pleas- 
ure, I mean, which is in great part caused . by 
the abstraction of all time from their verses. 
There is some awe mixed with the joy of our sur- 
prise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, 
two or three hundred years ago, says that which 
lies close to my own soul, that which I also had 
well-nigh thought and said. But for the evidence 
thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine of 
the identity of all minds, we should suppose some 
preestablished harmony, some foresight of souls 
that were to be, and some preparation of stores 
for their future wants, like the fact observed in 
insects, who lay up food before death for the 
young grub they shall never see. 

I would not be hurried by any love of system, 
by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the 
Book. We all know, that as the human body can 
be nourished on any food, though it were boiled 
grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind 
can be fed by any knowledge. And great and 
heroic men have existed who had almost no other 
information than by the printed page. I only 
would say that it needs a strong head to bear that 
diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As 
the proverb says, " He that would bring home the 
wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of 
the Indies." There is then creative reading as well 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 81 

as creative writing. When the mind is braced by 
labor and invention, the page of whatever book 
we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. 
Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense 
of our author is as broad as the world. We then 
see, what is always true, that as the seer's hour of 
vision is short and rare among heavy days and 
months, so is its record, perchance, the least part 
of his volume. The discerning will read, in his 
Plato or Shakspeare, only that least part, — only 
the authentic utterances of the oracle ; — all the 
rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's 
and Shakspeare's. 

Of course there is a portion of reading quite 
indispensable to a vv^ise man. History and exact 
science he must learn by laborious reading. Col- 
leges, in like manner, have their indispensable of- 
fice, — to teach elements. But they can only highly 
serve us when they aim not to drill, but to create ; 
when they gather from far every ray of various 
genius to their hospitable halls, and by the con- 
centrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on 
flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in 
which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. 
Gowns and pecuniary foundations, though of 
towns of gold, can never countervail the least sen- 
tence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our 
American colleges will recede in their public im- 
portance, whilst they grow richer every year. 



8^ RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

IIL There goes in the world a notion that the 
scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as 
unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a pen- 
knife for an axe. The so-called " practical men " 
sneer at speculative men, as if, because they specu- 
late or see, they could do nothing. I have heard it 
said that the clergy, — who are always, more uni- 
versally than any other class, the scholars of their 
day, — are addressed as women ; that the rough, 
spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, 
but only a mincing and diluted speech. They are 
often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there 
are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this 
is true of the studious classes, it is not just and 
wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but 
it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. 
Without it thought can never ripen into truth. 
Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud 
of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction 
is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without 
the heroic mind. The preamble of thought, the 
transition through which it passes from the un- 
conscious to the conscious, is action. Only so 
much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we 
know whose words are loaded with life, and whose 
not. 

The world, — this shadow of the soul, or other 
me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys 
which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 83 

with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding 
tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and 
take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, 
taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb abyss 
be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissi- 
pate its fear; I dispose of it within the circuit of 
my expanding life. So much only of life as I 
know by experience, so much of the wilderness have 
I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended 
my being, my dominion. I do not see how any man 
can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, 
to spare any action in which he can partake. It 
is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, 
calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in 
eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges 
every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of 
power. 

It is the raw material out of which the intellect 
moulds her splendid products. A strange process 
too, this by which experience is converted into 
thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin. 
The manufacture goes forward at all hours. 

The actions and events of our childhood and 
youth are now matters of calmest observation. 
They lie like fair pictures in the air. Not so with 
our recent actions, — with the business which we 
now have in hand. On this we are quite unable to 
speculate. Our affections as yet circulate through 
it. We no more feel or know it than we feel the 



84 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body. The 
new deed is yet a part of life, — remains for a time 
immersed in our unconscious life. In some con- 
templative hour it detaches itself from the life 
like a ripe fruit, to become a thought of the mind. 
Instantly it is raised, transfigured ; the corruptible 
has put on incorruption. Henceforth it is an ob- 
ject of beauty, however base its origin and neigh- 
borhood. Observe too the impossibility of ante- 
dating this act. In its grub state, it cannot fly, 
it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly, 
without observation, the selfsame thing unfurls 
beautiful wings, and is an angel of wisdom. So is 
there no fact, no event, in our private history, 
which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, 
inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our 
body into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, 
school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, 
and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, 
and many another fact that once filled the whole 
sky, are gone already ; friend and relative, profes- 
sion and party, town and country, nation and 
world, must also soar and sing. 

Of course, he who has put forth his total 
strength in fit actions has the richest return of 
wisdom. I will not shut myself out of this globe 
of action, and transplant an oak into a flower-pot, 
there to hunger and pine ; nor trust the revenue 
of some single faculty, and exhaust one vein of 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 85 

thought, much like those Savoyards, who, getting 
their livelihood by carving shepherds, shep- 
herdesses, and smoking Dutchmen, for all Europe, 
went out one day to the mountain to find stock, 
and discovered that they had whittled up the last 
of their pine-trees. Authors we have, in numbers, 
who have written out their vein, and who, moved 
by a commendable prudence, sail for Greece or 
Palestine, follow the trapper into the prairie, or 
ramble round Algiers, to replenish their merchant- 
able stock. 

If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar 
would be covetous of action. Life is our diction- 
ary. Years are well spent in country labors ; in 
town ; in the insight into trades and manufactures ; 
in frank intercourse with many men and women; 
in science ; in art ; to the one end of mastering in 
all their facts a language by which to illustrate 
and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately 
from any speaker how much he has already lived, 
through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. 
Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we 
get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. 
This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and 
books only copy the language which the field and 
the work-yard made. 

But the final value of action, like that of books, 
and better than books, is that it is a resource. 
That great principle of Undulation in nature, that 



86 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

shows itself in the inspiring and expiring of the 
breath ; in desire and satiety ; in the ebb and flow 
of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; 
and, as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom 
and every fluid, is known to us under the name of 
Polarity, — these " fits of easy transmission and 
reflection," as Newton called them, — are the law 
of nature because they are the law of spirit. 

The mind now thinks, now acts, and each fit 
reproduces the other. When the artist has ex- 
hausted his materials, when the fancy no longer 
paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended 
and books are a weariness, — he has always the re- 
source to live. Character is higher than intellect. 
Thinking is the function. Living is the function- 
ary. The stream retreats to its source. A great 
soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to 
think. Does he lack organ or medium to impart 
his truths .f^ He can still fall back on this elemen- 
tal force of living them. This is a total act. 
Thinking is a partial act. Let the grandeur of 
justice shine in his aff*airs. Let the beauty of af- 
fection cheer his lowly roof. Those " far from 
fame," who dwell and act with him, will feel the 
force of his constitution in the doings and pas- 
sages of the day better than it can be measured by 
any public and designed display. Time shall teach 
him that the scholar loses no hour which the man 
lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of his 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 87 

instinct, screened from influence. What is lost in 
seemliness is gained in strength. Not out of those 
on whom systems of education have exhausted 
their culture comes the helpful giant to destroy 
the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled 
savage nature ; out of terrible Druids and Ber- 
serkers come at last Alfred and Shakspeare. 

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning 
to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to 
every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and 
the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned 
hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always 
we are invited to work ; only be this limitation ob- 
served, that a man shall not for the sake of wider 
activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judg- 
ments and modes of action. 

I have now spoken of the education of the 
scholar by nature, by books, and by action. It 
remains to say somewhat of his duties. 

They are such as become Man Thinking. They 
may all be comprised in self-trust. The office of 
the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men 
by showing them facts amidst appearances. He 
plies the slow, unhonored, and unpa?^: task of ob- 
servation. Flamsteed ^ and Herschel, in their 
glazed observatories, may catalogue the stars with 
the praise of all men, and the results being splen- 

^ John Flamsteed (1646-1719), an English astronomer. 



88 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

did and useful, honor is sure. But he, in his pri- 
vate observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebu- 
lous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man 
has thought of as such, — watching days and 
months sometimes for a few facts; correcting still 
his old records ; — must relinquish display and im- 
mediate fame. In the long period of his prepara- 
tion he must betray often an ignorance and shift- 
lessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of 
the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must 
stammer in his speech; often forego the living for 
the dead. Worse yet, he must accept, — ^how often ! 
poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure 
of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, 
the education, the religion of society, he takes the 
cross of making his own, and, of course, the self- 
accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncer- 
tainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and 
tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and 
self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in 
which he seems to stand to society, and especially 
to educated society. For all this loss and scorn, 
what offset .f^ He is to find consolation in exercis- 
ing the highest functions of human nature. He is 
one who rais.s himself from private considerations 
and breathes and lives on public and illustrious 
thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's 
heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that 
retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 89 

communicating heroic sentiments, noble biog- 
raphies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of 
history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in 
all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as 
its commentary on the world of actions, — these he 
shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new 
verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces 
on the passing men and events of to-day, — this he 
shall hear and promulgate. 

These being his functions, it becomes him to feel 
all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the 
popular cry. He and he only knows the world. 
The world of any moment is the merest appear- 
ance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a gov- 
ernment, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is 
cried up by half mankind and cried down by the 
other half, as if all depended on this particular up 
or down. The odds are that the whole question 
is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar 
has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him 
not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, 
though the ancient and honorable of the earth af- 
firm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in 
steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by 
himself; add observation to observation, patient of 
neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own time, 
— happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone 
that this day he has seen something truly. Success 
treads on every right step. For the instinct is 



90 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he 
thinks. He then learns that in going down into 
the secrets of his own mind he has descended into 
the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who 
has mastered any law in his private thoughts is 
master to that extent of all men whose language 
he speaks, and of all into whose language his own 
can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude re- 
membering his spontaneous thoughts and record- 
ing them, is found to have recorded that which 
men in crowded cities find true for them also. The 
orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank 
confessions, his want of knowledge of the persons 
he addresses, until he finds that he is the comple- 
ment of his hearers ; — that they drink his words 
because he fulfils for them their own nature; the 
deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest 
presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is 
the most acceptable, most public, and univer- 
sally true. The people delight in it; the better 
part of every man feels. This is my music ; this is 
myself. 

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. 
Eree should the scholar be, — free and brave. Free 
even to the definition of freedom, "without any 
hindrance that does not arise out of his own consti- 
tution." Brave ; for fear is a thing which a scholar 
by his very function puts behind him. Fear al- 
ways springs from ignorance. It is a shame to 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 91 

him if his tranquillity, amid dangerous times, arise 
from the presumption that like children and women 
his is a protected class ; or if he seek a temporary 
peace by the diversion of his thoughts from poli- 
tics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an 
ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into micro- 
scopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to 
keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger 
still; so is the fear worse. Man-like let him turn 
and face it. Let him look into its eye and search 
its nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of 
this lion, — ^which lies no great way back; he will 
then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its 
nature and extent; he will have made his hands 
meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it 
and pass on superior. The world is his who can see 
through its pretension. What deafness, what 
stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you be- 
hold is there only by suff'erance, — by your suffer- 
ance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt 
it its mortal blow. 

Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. It is 
a mischievous notion that we are come late into 
nature; that the world was finished a long time 
ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the 
hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attri- 
butes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it 
is flint. They adapt themselves to it as they may ; 
but in proportion as a man has any thing in him 



92 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

divine, the firmament flows before him and takes 
his signet and form. Not he is great who can alter 
matter, but he who can alter mj state of mind. 
They are the kings of the world who give the color 
of their present thought to all nature and all art, 
and persuade men by the cheerful serenity of their 
carrying the matter, that this thing which they do 
is the apple which the ages have desired to pluck, 
now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the har- 
vest. The great man makes the great thing. 
Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the 
table. ^ Linnaeus makes botany the most alluring 
of studies, and wins it from the farmer and the 
herb-woman ; Davy, chemistry ; and Cuvier, fossils. 
The day is always his who works in it with serenity 
and great aims. The unstable estimates of men 
crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as 
the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon. 
For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than 
can be fathomed, — darker than can be enlightened. 
I might not carry with me the feeling of my au- 
dience in stating my own belief. But I have al- 
ready shown the ground of my hope, in adverting 
to the doctrine that man is one. I believe man 
has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He 
has almost lost the light that can lead him back 

^ The reply said to have been made by a distinguished 
Scottish chieftain, when, at a banquet given by a rival, he 
was asked to take the seat of honor. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 93 

to his prerogatives. Men are become of no ac- 
count. Men in history, men in the world of to- 
day, are bugs, are spawn, and are called " the 
mass " and " the herd." In a century, in a millen- 
nium, one or two men; that is to say, one or two 
approximations to the right state of every man. 
All the rest behold in the hero or the poet their 
own green and crude being, — ripened ; yes, and are 
content to be less, so that may attain to its full 
stature. What a testimony, full of grandeur, full 
of pity, is borne to the demands of his own nature, 
by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who re- 
joices in the glory of his chief. The poor and the 
low find some amends to their immense moral ca- 
pacity, for their acquiescence in a political and 
social inferiority. They are content to be brushed 
like flies from the path of a great person, so that 
justice shall be done by him to that common nature 
which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged 
and glorified. They sun themselves in the great 
man's light, and feel it to be their own element. 
They cast the dignity of man from their downtrod 
selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish 
to add one drop of blood to make that great heart 
beat, those giant sinews combat and conquer. He 
lives for us, and we live in him. 

Men such as they are very naturally seek money 
or power ; and power because it is as good as 
money, — ^^the " spoils," so called, " of office." And 



94< RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

why not? for they aspire to the highest, and this, 
in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. 
Wake them and they shall quit the false good and 
leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks 
and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by 
the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. 
The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for 
extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the 
materials strewn along the ground. The private 
life of one man shall be a more illustrious mon- 
archy, more formidable to its enemy, more sweet 
and serene in its influence to its friend, than any 
kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, 
comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. 
Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only 
done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can 
do for myself. The books which once we valued 
more than the apple of the eye, we have quite ex- 
hausted. What is that but saying that we have 
come up with the point of view which the universal 
mind took through the eyes of one scribe ; we have 
been that man, and have passed on. First, one, 
then another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing 
greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and 
more abundant food. The man has never lived 
that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be 
enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on 
any one side to this unbounded, unboundable em- 
pire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 95 

of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily, 
and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates 
the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one 
light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is 
one soul which animates all men. 

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this 
abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not to delay 
longer to add what I have to say of nearer refer- 
ence to the time and to this country. 

Historically, there is thought to be a difference 
in the ideas which predominate over successive 
epochs, and there are data for marking the genius 
of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the 
Reflective or Philosophical age. With the views I 
have intimated of the oneness or the identity of 
the mind through all individuals, I do not 
much dwell on these differences. In fact, I be- 
lieve each individual passes through all three. The 
boy is a Greek ; the youth, romantic ; the adult, re- 
flective. I deny not, however, that a revolution in 
the leading idea may be distinctly enough traced. 

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. 
Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, are crit- 
ical ; we are embarrassed with second thoughts ; 
we cannot enjoy any thing for hankering to know 
whereof the pleasure consists; we are lined with 
eyes ; we see with our feet ; the time is infected 
with Hamlet's unhappinessj — 



96 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. 

It is so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be 
pitied. Would we be blind .^^ Do we fear lest we 
should outsee nature and God, and drink truth 
dry.f^ I look upon the discontent of the literary 
class as a mere announcement of the fact that they 
find themselves not in the state of mind of their 
fathers, and regret the coming state as untried ; as 
a boy dreads the water before he has learned that 
he can swim. If there is any period one would de- 
sire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; 
when the old and the new stand side by side and 
admit of being compared ; when the energies of all 
men are searched by fear and by hope; when the 
historic glories of the old can be compensated by 
the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, 
like all times, is a very good one, if we but know 
what to do with it. 

I read with some joy of the auspicious signs of 
the coming days, as they glimmer already through 
poetry and art, through philosophy and science, 
through church and state. 

One of these signs is the fact that the same 
movement which effected the elevation of what was 
called the lowest class in the state assumed in lit- 
erature a very marked and as benign an aspect. 
Instead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the 
low, the common, was explored and poetized. 
That which had been negligently trodden under 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 97 

foot by those who were harnessing and provision- 
ing themselves for long journeys into far coun- 
tries is suddenly found to be richer than all 
foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the 
feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, 
the meaning of household life, are the topics of 
the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign, — is 
it not ? of new vigor when the extremities are made 
active, when currents of warm life run into the 
hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the 
remote, the romantic ; what is doing in Italy or 
Arabia; what is Greek art, or Proven9al min- 
strelsy ; I embrace the common, I explore and sit 
at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me in- 
sight into to-day, and you may have the antique 
and future worlds. What would we really know 
the meaning of.^^ The meal in the firkin; the milk 
in the pan; the ballad in the street; the nev/s of 
the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the 
gait of the body ; — show me the ultimate reason 
of these matters ; show me the sublime presence of 
the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it 
does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of na- 
ture; let me see every trifle bristling with the 
polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal 
law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger re- 
ferred to the like cause by which light undulates 
and poets sing; — and the world lies no longer a 
dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and 



98 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

order ; there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one 
design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle 
and the lowest trench. 

This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, 
Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, 
Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea they have 
differently followed and with various success. In 
contrast with their writing, the style of Pope, of 
Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. 
This writing is blood-warm. Man is surprised to 
find that things near are not less beautiful and 
wondrous than things remote. The near explains 
the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is 
related to all nature. This perception of the 
worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. 
Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the 
moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius 
of the ancients. 

There is one man of genius who has done much 
for this philosophy of life, whose literary value 
has never yet been rightly estimated; — I mean 
Emanuel Swedenborg. The most imaginative of 
men, yet writing with the precision of a mathe- 
matician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philo- 
sophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his 
time. Such an attempt of course must have diffi- 
culty which no genius could surmount. But he 
saw and showed the connection between nature and 
the affections of the soul, He pierced the em- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 99 

blematic or spiritual character of the visible, 
audible, tangible world. Especially did his shade- 
loving muse hover over and interpret the lower 
parts of nature; he showed the mysterious bond 
that allies moral evil to the foul material forms, 
and has given in epical parables a theory of in- 
sanity, of beasts, of unclean and fearful things. 

Another sign of our times, also marked by an 
analogous political movement, is the new impor- 
tance given to the single person. Every thing that 
tends to insulate the individual, — to surround him 
with barriers of natural respect, so that each man 
shall feel the world is his, and man shall treat with 
man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state, 
— tends to true union as well as greatness. " I 
learned," said the melancholy Pestalozzi, " that no 
man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to 
help any other man." Help must come from the 
bosom alone. The scholar is that man who must 
take up into himself all the ability of the time, all 
the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the 
future. He must be an university of knowledges. 
If there be one lesson more than another which 
should pierce his ear, it is. The world is nothing, 
the man is all; in yourself is the law of all na- 
ture, and you know not yet how a globule of sap 
ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Rea- 
son ; it is for you to know all ; it is for you to dare 
all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confi- 



100 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

dence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by 
all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, 
to the American Scholar. We have listened too 
long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit 
of the American freeman is already suspected to 
be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private ava- 
rice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The 
scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See al- 
ready the tragic consequence. The mind of this 
country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon 
itself. There is no work for any but the decorous 
and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest 
promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated 
by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the 
stars of God, find the earth below not in unison 
with these, but are hindered from action by the 
disgust which the principles on which business is 
managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of dis- 
gust, some of them suicides. What is the remedy? 
They did not yet see, and thousands of young men 
as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the 
career do not yet see, that if the single man plant 
himself indomitably on his instincts, and there 
abide, the huge world will come round to him. 
Patience, — patience; with the shades of all the 
good and great for company; and for solace the 
perspective of your own infinite life ; and for work 
the study and the communication of principles, 
the maldng those instincts prevalent, the conver- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 101 

sion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace 
in the world, not to be an unit ; — not to be reck- 
oned one character; — not to yield that peculiar 
fruit which each man was created to bear, but to 
be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the 
thousand, of the party, the section, to which we be- 
long; and our opinion predicted geographically, 
as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and 
friends, — please God, ours shall not be so. We 
will walk on our own feet ; we will work with our 
own hands ; we will speak our own minds. The 
study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, 
for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread 
of man and the love of man shall be a wall of de- 
fence and a wreath of joy around all. A nation 
of men will for the first time exist, because each be- 
lieves himself inspired by the Divine Soul which 
also inspires all men.^ 



THE METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC 
DISCOVERY' 

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

In the two preceding lectures I have endeavored 
to indicate to you the extent of the subject-matter 
of the inquiry upon which we are engaged; and 
having thus acquired some conception of the Past 
and Present phenomena of Organic Nature, I must 
now turn to that which constitutes the great prob- 
lem which we have set before ourselves ; — I mean, 
the question of what knowledge we have of the 
causes of these phenomena of organic nature, and 
how such knowledge is obtainable. 

Here, on the threshold of the inquiry, an objec- 
tion meets us. There are in the world a number 
of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose 
judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost 
respect on account of their sincerity, who are of 
opinion that Vital Phenomena, and especially all 
questions relating to the origin of vital phenom- 

^ On the Origin of Species, Lecture iii. The full title of 
the lecture is Tlie Method by Which the Causes of the 
Present and Past Conditions of Organic Nature Are to Be 
Discovered. — The Origination of Living Beings. 

103 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 103 

ena, are questions quite apart from the ordinary 
run of inquiry, and are, by their very nature, 
placed out of our reach. They say that all these 
phenomena originated miraculously, or in some 
way totally different from the ordinary course of 
nature, and that therefore they conceive it to be 
futile, not to say presumptuous, to attempt to in- 
quire into them. 

To such sincere and earnest persons, I would 
only say, that a question of this kind is not to be 
shelved upon theoretical or speculative grounds. 
You may remember the story of the Sophist who 
demonstrated to Diogenes in the most complete and 
satisfactory manner that he could not walk ; that, 
in fact, all motion was an impossibility ; and that 
Diogenes refuted him by simply getting up and 
walking round his tub. So, in the same way, the 
man of science replies to objections of this kind, 
by simply getting up and walking onward, and 
showing what science has done and is doing, — by 
pointing to that immense mass of facts which have 
been ascertained and systematized under the forms 
of the great doctrines of Morphology, of Develop- 
ment, of Distribution, and the like. He sees an 
enormous mass of facts and laws relating to or- 
ganic beings, which stand on the same good sound 
foundation as every other natural law. With this 
mass of facts and laws before us, therefore, seeing 
that, as far as organic matters have hitherto been 



104i THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

accessible and studied, they have shown themselves 
capable of yielding to scientific investigation, we 
may accept this as proof that order and law reign 
there as well as in the rest of nature. The man 
of science says nothing to objectors of this sort, 
but supposes that we can and shall walk to a knowl- 
edge of the origin of organic nature, in the same 
way that we have walked to a knowledge of the 
laws and principles of the inorganic world. 

But there are objectors who say the same from 
ignorance and ill-will. To such I would reply 
that the objection comes ill from them, and that 
the real presumption, I may almost say the real 
blasphemy, in this matter, is in the attempt to 
limit that inquiry into the causes of phenomena, 
which is the source of all human blessings, and 
from which has sprung all human prosperity and 
progress ; for, after all, we can accomplish com- 
paratively little; the limited range of our own 
faculties bounds us on every side, — the field of our 
powers of observation is small enough, and he who 
endeavors to narrow the sphere of our inquiries is 
only pursuing a course that is likely to produce 
the greatest harm to his fellow-men. 

But now, assuming, as we all do, I hope, that 
these phenomena are properly accessible to in- 
quiry, and setting out upon our search into the 
causes of the phenomena of organic nature, or, at 
any rate, setting out to discover how much we at 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 105 

present know upon these abstruse matters, the 
question arises as to what is to be our course of 
proceeding, and what method we must lay down 
for our guidance. I reply to that question, that 
our method must be exactly the same as that which 
is pursued in any other scientific inquiry, the 
method of scientific investigation being the same 
for all orders of facts and phenomena whatsoever. 

I must dwell a little on this point, for I wish 
you to leave this room with a very clear convic- 
tion that scientific investigation is not, as many 
people seem to suppose, some kind of modern 
black art. I say that you might easily gather this 
impression from the manner in which many per- 
sons speak of scientific inquiry, or talk about in- 
ductive and deductive philosophy, or the principles 
of the " Baconian philosophy." I do protest that, 
of the vast number of cants in this world, there 
are none, to my mind, so contemptible as the 
pseudo-scientific cant which is talked about the 
" Baconian philosophy." 

To hear people talk about the great Chancellor,^ 
— and a very great man he certainly was, — you 
would think that it was he who had invented sci- 
ence, and that there was no such thing as sound 
reasoning before the time of Queen Elizabeth ! Of 
course you say, that cannot possibly be true ; you 

^ Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (1561-1626), English 
philosopher and statesman. 



106 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

perceive, on a moment's reflection, that such an 
idea is absurdly wrong; and yet, so firmly rooted 
is this sort of impression, — I cannot call it an 
idea, or conception, — the thing is too absurd to 
be entertained, — but so completely does it exist at 
the bottom of most men's minds, that this has been 
a matter of observation with me for many years 
past. There are many men who, though knowing 
absolutely nothing of the subject with which they 
may be dealing, wish, nevertheless, to damage the 
author of some view with which they think fit to 
disagree. What they do, then, is not to go and 
learn something about the subject, which one 
would naturally think the best way of fairly deal- 
ing with it ; but they abuse the originator of the 
view they question, in a general manner, and wind 
up by saying that, " After all, you know, the 
principles and method of this author are totally 
opposed to the canons of the Baconian philoso- 
phy." Then everybody applauds, as a matter of 
course, and agrees that it must be so. But if you 
were to stop them all in the middle of their ap- 
plause, you would probably find that neither the 
speaker nor his applauders could tell you how or in 
what way it was so; neither the one nor the other 
having the slightest idea of what they mean when 
they speak of the " Baconian philosophy." 

You will understand, I hope, that I have not the 
slightest desire to join in the outcry against either 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 107 

the morals, the intellect, or the great genius of 
Lord Chancellor Bacon. He was undoubtedly a 
very great man, let people say what they will of 
him ; but notwithstanding all that he did for phi- 
losophy, it would be entirely wrong to suppose 
that the methods of modern scientific inquiry origi- 
nated with him, or with his age ; they originated 
with the first man, whoever he was ; and in- 
deed existed long before him, for many of the 
essential processes of reasoning are exerted by the 
higher order of brutes as completely and effectively 
as by ourselves. We see in many of the brute 
creation the exercise of one, at least, of the 
same powers of reasoning as that which we our- 
selves employ. 

The method of scientific investigation is nothing 
but the expression of the necessary mode of work- 
ing of the human mind. It is simply the mode 
at which all phenomena are reasoned about, ren- 
dered precise and exact. There is no more differ- 
ence, but there is just the same kind of differ- 
ence, between the mental operations of a man of 
science and those of an ordinary person, as there 
is between the operations and methods of a baker 
or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common 
scales, and the operations of a chemist in perform- 
ing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his 
balance and finely-graduated weights. It is not 
that the action of the scales in the one case, and 



108 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

the balance in the other, differ in the principles 
of their construction or manner of working; but 
the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis 
than the other, and of course turns by the addition 
of a much smaller weight. 

You will understand this better, perhaps, if I 
give you some familiar example. You have all 
heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of science 
work by means of Induction and Deduction, and 
that by the help of these operations, they, in a 
sort of sense, wring from Nature certain other 
things, which are called Natural Laws, and Causes, 
and that out of these, by some cunning skill of 
their own, they build up Hypotheses and Theories. 
And it is imagined by many, that the operations 
of the common mind can be by no means compared 
with these processes, and that they have to be ac- 
quired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the 
craft. To hear all these large words, you would 
think that the mind of a man of science must 
be constituted differently from that of his fellow- 
men; but if you will not be frightened by terms, 
you will discover that you are quite wrong, and 
that all these terrible apparatus are being used by 
yourselves every day and every hour of your 
lives. 

There is a well known incident in one of 
Moliere's plays, where the author makes the hero 
express unbounded delight on being told that he 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 109 

had been talking prose during the whole of his life/ 
In the same way, I trust, that you will take com- 
fort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the dis- 
covery that you have been acting on the principles 
of inductive and deductive philosophy during the 
same period. Probably there is not one here who 
has not in the course of the day had occasion to 
set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of 
the very same kind, though differing of course 
in degree, as that which a scientific man goes 
through in tracing the causes of natural phe- 
nomena. 

A very trivial circumstance will serve to exem- 
plify this. Suppose you go into a fruiterer's shop, 
wanting an apple, — you take up one, and, on bit- 
ing it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see 
that it is hard and green. You take up another 
one, and that too is hard, green, and sour. The 
shopman offers you a third; but, before biting it, 
you examine it, and find that it is hard and green, 
and you immediately say that you will not have it, 
as it must be sour, like those that you have already 
tried. 

Nothing can be more simple than that, you 
think; but if you will take the trouble to analyze 
and trace out into its logical elements what has 
been done by the mind, you will be greatly sur- 

^ The incident occurs in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the 
hero of which is Monsieur Jourdain. 



110 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

prised. In the first place, you have performed the 
operation of Induction. You found that, in two 
experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went 
together with sourness. It was so in the first case, 
and it was confirmed by the second. True, it is a 
very small basis, but still it is enough to make an 
induction from ; you generalize the facts, and you 
expect to find sourness in apples where you get 
hardness and greenness. You found upon that a 
general law, that all hard and green apples are 
sour ; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect in- 
duction. Well, having got your natural law in 
this way, when you are off'ered another apple which 
you find is hard and green, you say, " All hard 
and green apples are sour ; this apple is hard and 
green, therefore this apple is sour." That train 
of reasoning is what logicians call a syllogism, and 
has all its various parts and terms, — its major 
premiss, its minor premiss, and its conclusion. 
And, by the help of further reasoning, which, if 
drawn out, would have to be exhibited in two or 
three other syllogisms, you arrive at your final 
determination, " I will not have that apple." So 
that, you see, you have, in the first place, estab- 
lished a law by Induction, and upon that you have 
founded a Deduction, and reasoned out the special 
conclusion of the particular case. Well now, sup- 
pose, having got your law, that at some time 
afterwards, you are discussing the qualities of 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 111 

apples with a friend : you will say to him, " It is a 
very curious thing, — but I find that all hard and 
green apples are sour ! " Your friend says to you, 
" But how do you know that ? " You at once 
reply, " Oh, because I have tried them over and 
over again, and have always found them to be so." 
Well, if we were talking science instead of common 
sense, we should call that an Experimental Verifi- 
cation. And, if still opposed, you go further, and 
say, " I have heard from the people in Somerset- 
shire and Devonshire, where a large number of 
apples are grown, that they have observed the 
same thing. It is also found to be the case in 
Normandy, and in North America. In short, I 
find it to be the universal experience of mankind 
wherever attention has been directed to the sub- 
ject." Whereupon, your friend, unless he is a very 
unreasonable man, agrees with you, and is con- 
vinced that you are quite right in the conclusion 
you have drawn. He believes, although perhaps 
he does not know he believes it, that the more 
extensive Verifications are, — that the more fre- 
quently experiments have been made, and results 
of the same kind arrived at, — that the more varied 
the conditions under which the same results are 
attained, the more certain is the ultimate conclu- 
sion, and he disputes the question no further. He 
sees that the experiment has been tried under all 
sorts of conditions, as to time, place, and people, 



112 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

with the same result ; and he says with you, there- 
fore, that the law you have laid down must be a 
good one, and he must believe it. 

In science we do the same thing; — the philos- 
opher exercises precisely the same faculties, 
though in a much more delicate manner. In sci- 
entific inquiry it becomes a matter of duty to ex- 
pose a supposed law to every possible kind of 
verification, and to take care, moreover, that this 
is done intentionally, and not left to a mere acci- 
dent, as in the case of the apples. And in science, 
as in common life, our confidence in a law is in 
exact proportion to the absence of variation in the 
result of our experimental verifications. For in- 
stance, if you let go your grasp of an article you 
may have in your hand, it will immediately fall to 
the ground. That is a very common verification 
of one of the best established laws of nature — that 
of gravitation. The method by which men of sci- 
ence establish the existence of that law is exactly 
the same as that by which we have established the 
trivial proposition about the sourness of hard and 
green apples. But we believe it in such an exten- 
sive, thorough, and unhesitating manner because 
the universal experience of mankind verifies it, and 
we can verify it ourselves at any time ; and that is 
the strongest possible foundation on which any 
natural law can rest. 

So much, then, by way of proof that the method 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 113 

of establishing laws in science is exactly the same 
as that pursued in common life. Let us now turn 
to another matter, (though really it is but another 
phase of the same question,) and that is, the 
method by which, from the relations of certain phe- 
nomena, we prove that some stand in the position 
of causes towards the others. 

I want to put the case clearly before you, and I 
will therefore show you what I mean by another 
familiar example. I will suppose that one of you, 
on coming down in the morning to the parlor of 
your house, finds that a tea-pot and some spoons 
which had been left in the room on the previous 
evening are gone, — ^the window is open, and you 
observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window- 
frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice 
the impress of a hobnailed shoe on the gravel out- 
side. All these phenomena have struck your at- 
tention instantly, and before two seconds have 
passed you say, " Oh, somebody has broken open 
the window, entered the room, and run off with the 
spoons and the tea-pot ! " That speech is out of 
your mouth in a moment. And you will probably 
add, " I know there has ; I am quite sure of it ! " 
You mean to say exactly what you know; but in 
reality you are giving expression to what is, in all 
essential particulars, an Hypothesis. You do not 
Tcnow it at all; it is nothing but an hypothesis 
rapidly framed in your own mind ! And, it is an 



114 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

hypothesis founded on a long train of inductions 
and deductions. 

What are those inductions and deductions, and 
how have you got at this hypothesis? You have 
observed, in the first place, that the window is 
open ; but by a train of reasoning involving many 
Inductions and Deductions, you have probably ar- 
rived long before at the General Law — and a very 
good one it is — that windows do not open of them- 
selves ; and you therefore conclude that something 
has opened the window. A second general law 
that you have arrived at in the same way is, that 
tea-pots and spoons do not go out of a window 
spontaneously, and you are satisfied that, as they 
are not now where you left them, they have been 
removed. In the third place, you look at the marks 
on the window-sill, and the shoe-marks outside, and 
you say that in all previous experience the former 
kind of mark has never been produced by anything 
else but the hand of a human being; and the same 
experience shows that no other animal but man at 
present wears shoes with hobnails in them such as 
would produce the marks in the gravel. I do not 
know, even if we could discover any of those 
" missing links " that are talked about, that they 
would help us to any other conclusion ! At any rate 
the law which states our present experience is 
strong enough for my present purpose. You next 
reach the conclusion, that as these kinds of marks 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 115 

have not been left by any other animals than men, 
or are liable to be formed in any other way than 
by a man's hand and shoe, the marks in question 
have been formed by a man in that way. You 
have, further, a general law, founded on observa- 
tion and experience, and that, too, is, I am sorry 
to say, a very universal and unimpeachable one, — - 
that some men are thieves ; and you assume at once 
from all these premisses — and that is what consti- 
tutes your hypothesis — that the man who made 
the marks outside and on the window-sill opened 
the window, got into the room, and stole your tea- 
pot and spoons. You have now arrived at a Vera 
Causa ^; — you have assumed a Cause which it 
is plain is competent to produce all the phenomena 
you have observed. You can explain all these 
phenomena only by the hypothesis of a thief. But 
that is a hypothetical conclusion, of the justice of 
which you have no absolute proof at all ; it is only 
rendered highly probable by a series of inductive 
and deductive reasonings. 

I suppose your first action, assuming that you 
are a man of ordinary common sense, and that you 
have established this hypothesis to your own satis- 
faction, will very likely be to go off for the police, 
and set them on the track of the burglar, with the 
view to the recovery of your property. But just 
as you are starting with this object, some person 

^ True cause. 



116 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

comes in, and on learning what you are about, 
says, "My good friend, you are going on a great 
deal too fast. How do you know that the man 
who really made the marks took the spoons? It 
might have been a monkey that took them, and the 
man may have merely looked in afterwards." You 
would probably reply, " Well, that is all very well, 
but you see it is contrary to all experience of the 
way tea-pots and spoons are abstracted ; so that, 
at any rate, your hypothesis is less probable than 
mine." While you are talking the thing over in 
this way, another friend arrives, one of that good 
kind of people that I was talking of a little while 
ago. And he might say, " Oh, my dear sir, you 
are certainly going on a great deal too fast. You 
are most presumptuous. You admit that all these 
occurrences took place when you were fast asleep, 
at a time when you could not possibly have known 
anything about what was taking place. How do 
you know that the laws of Nature are not sus- 
pended during the night? It may be that there 
has been some kind of supernatural interference 
in this case." In point of fact, he declares that 
your hypothesis is one of which you cannot at all 
demonstrate the truth, and that you are by no 
means sure that the laws of Nature are the same 
when you are asleep as when you are awake. 

Well, now, you cannot at the moment answer 
that kind of reasoning. You feel that your worthy 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 117 

friend has you somewhat at a disadvantage. You 
will feel perfectly convinced in your own mind, 
however, that you are quite right, and you say to 
him, " My good friend, I can only be guided by the 
natural probabilities of the case, and if you will 
be kind enough to stand aside and permit me to 
pass, I will go and fetch the police." Well, we 
will suppose that your journey is successful, and 
that by good luck you meet with a policeman ; that 
eventually the burglar is found with your prop- 
erty on his person, and the marks correspond to 
his hand and to his boots. Probably any jury 
would consider those facts a very good experi- 
mental verification of your hypothesis, touching 
the cause of the abnormal phenomena observed in 
your parlor, and would act accordingly. 

Now, in this supposititious case, I have taken 
phenomena of a very^ common kind, in order that 
3^ou might see what are the different steps in an 
ordinary process of reasoning, if you will only 
take the trouble to analyze it carefully. All the 
operations I have described, you will see, are in- 
volved in the mind of any man of sense in leading 
him to a conclusion as to the course he should take 
in order to make good a robbery and punish the 
offender. I say that you are led, in that case, to 
your conclusion by exactly the same train of rea- 
soning as that which a man of science pursues when 
he is endeavoring to discover the origin and laws 



118 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

of the most occult phenomena. The process is, 
and always must be, the same; and precisely the 
same mode of reasoning was employed by Newton 
and Laplace in their endeavors to discover and de- 
fine the causes of the movements of the heavenly 
bodies, as you, with your own common sense, would 
employ to detect a burglar. The only difference 
is, that the nature of the inquiry being more ab- 
struse, every step has to be most carefully watched, 
so that there may not be a single crack or flaw in 
your hypothesis. A flaw or crack in many of the 
hypotheses of daily life may be of little or no 
moment as affecting the general correctness of 
the conclusions at which we may arrive ; but in a 
scientific inquiry a fallacy, great or small, is al- 
ways of importance, and is sure to be in the long 
run constantly productive of mischievous, if not 
fatal results. 

Do not allow yourselves to be misled by the com- 
mon notion that an hypothesis is untrustworthy 
simply because it is an hypothesis. It is often 
urged, in respect to some scientific conclusion, that, 
after all, it is only an hypothesis. But what more 
have we to guide us in nine-tenths of the most 
important affairs of daily life than hypotheses, 
and often very ill-based ones.^^ So that in science, 
where the evidence of an hypothesis is subjected 
to the most rigid examination, we may rightly 
pursue the same course. You may have hypoth- 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 119 

eses and hypotheses. A man may say, if he likes, 
that the moon is made of green cheese: that is an 
hypothesis. But another man, who has devoted a 
great deal of time and attention to the subject, and 
availed himself of the most powerful telescopes 
and the results of the observations of others, de- 
clares that in his opinion it is probably composed 
of materials very similar to those of which our own 
earth is made up : and that is also only an hypoth- 
esis. But I need not tell you that there is an enor- 
mous difference in the value of the two hypotheses. 
That one which is based on sound scientific knowl- 
edge is sure to have a corresponding value ; and 
that which is a mere hasty random guess is likely 
to have but little value. Every great step in our 
progress in discovering causes has been made in 
exactly the same way as that which I have detailed 
to you. A person observing the occurrence of 
certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally 
enough, what process, what kind of operation 
known to occur in nature applied to the particular 
case, will unravel and explain the mystery? 
Hence you have the scientific hypothesis ; and its 
value will be proportionate to the care and com- 
pleteness with which its basis had been tested and 
verified. It is in these matters as in the commonest 
affairs of practical life : the guess of the fool will 
be folly, while the guess of the wise man will con- 
tain wisdom. In all cases, you see that the value 



120 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

of the result depends on the patience and faithful- 
ness with which the investigator applies to his 
hypothesis every possible kind of verification. 

I dare say I may have to return to this point 
by-and-by; but having dealt thus far with our 
logical methods, I must now turn to something 
which, perhaps, you may consider more interest- 
ing, or, at any rate, more tangible. But in reality 
there are but few things that can be more im|)or- 
tant for you to understand than the mental proc- 
esses and the means by which we obtain scientific 
conclusions and theories.^ Having granted that 
the inquiry is a proper one, and having determined 
on the nature of the methods we are to pursue and 
which only can lead to success, I must now turn 
to the consideration of our knowledge of the na- 
ture of the processes which have resulted in the 
present condition of organic nature. 

Here, let me say at once, lest some of you mis- 
understand me, that I have extremely little to re- 
port. The question of how the present condition 
of organic nature came about, resolves itself into 
two questions. The first is: How has organic or 
living matter commenced its existence .^ And the 
second is: How has it been perpetuated.? On the 

^ Those who wish to study fully the doctrines of which 
I have endeavored to give some rough and ready illustra- 
tions must read Mr. John Stuart Mill's " System of Logic." 
[Author's note.] 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 121 

second question I shall have more to say here- 
after. But on the first one, what I now have to 
say will be for the most part of a negative char- 
acter. 

If you consider what kind of evidence we can 
have upon this matter, it will resolve itself into 
two kinds. We may have historical evidence and 
we may have experimental evidence. It is, for 
example, conceivable, that inasmuch as the hard- 
ened mud which forms a considerable portion of 
the thickness of the earth's crust contains faith- 
ful records of the past forms of life, and inasmuch 
as these differ more and more as we go further 
down, — it is possible and conceivable that we might 
come to some particular bed or stratum which 
should contain the remains of those creatures with 
which organic life began upon the earth. And if 
we did so, and if such forms of organic life were 
preservable, we should have what I would call his- 
torical evidence of the mode in which organic life 
began upon this planet. Many persons will tell 
you, and indeed you will find it stated in many 
works on geology, that this has been done, and that 
we really possess such a record ; there are some who 
imagine that the earliest forms of life of which we 
have as yet discovered any record, are in truth the 
forms in which animal life began upon the globe. 
The grounds on which they base that supposition 
are these : — That if you go through the enormous 



laa THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

thickness of the earth's crust and get down to the 
older rocks, the higher vertebrate animals — the 
quadrupeds, birds, and fishes — cease to be found; 
beneath them you find only the invertebrate ani- 
mals ; and in the deepest and lowest rocks those 
remains become scantier and scantier, not in any 
very gradual progression, however, until, at length, 
in what are supposed to be the oldest rocks, the 
animal remains which are found are almost always 
confined to four forms, — Oldhamia, whose precise 
nature is not known, whether plant or animal; 
Lingula, a kind of mollusc ; Trilohites, a crustacean 
animal, having the same essential plan of construc- 
tion, though differing in many details from a lob- 
ster or crab ; and Hymenocaris, which is also a 
crustacean. So that you have all the Fauna re- 
duced, at this period, to four forms : one a kind of 
animal or plant that we know nothing about, and 
three undoubted animals — two crustaceans and one 
mollusc. 

I think, considering the organization of these 
mollusca and Crustacea, and looking at their very 
complex nature, that it does indeed require a very 
strong imagination to conceive that these were the 
first created of all living things. And you must 
take into consideration the fact that we have not 
the slightest proof that these which we call the 
oldest beds are really so : I repeat, we have not 
the slightest proof of it. When you find in some 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 123 

places that in an enormous thickness of rocks there 
are but very scanty traces of life, or absolutely 
none at all; and that in ot?ier parts of the world 
rocks of the very same formation are crowded 
with the records of living forms, I think it is 
impossible to place any reliance on the supposi- 
tion, or to feel oneself justified in supposing that 
these are the forms in which life first commenced. 
I have not time here to enter upon the tech- 
nical grounds upon which I am led to this con- 
clusion, — that could hardly be done properly in 
half a dozen lectures on that part alone ; — I 
must content myself with saying that I do not at 
all believe that these are the oldest forms of 
life. 

I turn to the experimental side to see what evi- 
dence we have there. To enable us to say that we 
know anything about the experimental origination 
of organization and life, the investigator ought to 
be able to take inorganic matters, such as carbonic 
a,cid, ammonia, water, and salines, in any sort of 
inorganic combination, and be able to build them 
up into Protein matter, and then that Protein mat- 
ter ought to begin to live in an organic form. 
That, nobody has done as yet, and I suspect it will 
be a long while before anybody does do it. But the 
thing is by no means so impossible as it looks ; for 
the researches of modern chemistry have shown us 
— I won't say the road towards it, but, if I may so 



124 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

say, they have shown the finger-post pointing to 
the road that may lead to it. 

It is not many years ago — and you must recol- 
lect that Organic Chemistry is a young science, not 
above a couple of generations old, you must not 
expect too much of it, — it is not many years ago 
since it was said to be perfectly impossible to fabri- 
cate any organic compound; that is to say, any 
non-mineral compound which is to be found in an 
organized being. It remained so for a very long 
period; but it is now a considerable number of 
years since a distinguished foreign chemist con- 
trived to fabricate Urea, a substance of a very 
complex character, which forms one of the waste 
products of animal structures. And of late years 
a number of other compounds, such as Butyric 
Acid, and others, have been added to the list. I 
need not tell you that chemistry is an enormous 
distance from the goal I indicate ; all I wish to 
point out to you is, that it is by no means safe to 
say that that goal may not be reached one day. 
It may be that it is impossible for us to produce 
the conditions requisite to the origination of life; 
but we must speak modestly about the matter, and 
recollect that Science has put her foot upon the 
bottom round of the ladder. Truly he would be 
a bold man who would venture to predict where she 
will be fifty years hence. 

There is another inquiry which bears indirectly 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 125 

upon this question, and upon which I must say a 
few words. You are all of you aware of the phe- 
nomena of what is called spontaneous generation. 
Our forefathers, down to the seventeenth century, 
or thereabouts, all imagined, in perfectly good 
faith, that certain vegetable and animal forms gave 
birth, in the process of their decomposition, to in- 
sect life. Thus, if you put a piece of meat in the 
sun, and allowed it to putrefy, they conceived that 
the grubs which soon began to appear were the 
result of the action of a power of spontaneous gen- 
eration which the meat contained. And they could 
give you receipts for making various animal and 
vegetable preparations which would produce par- 
ticular kinds of animals. A very distinguished 
Italian naturalist, named Redi,^ took up the ques- 
tion, at a time when everybody believed in it; 
among others our own great Harvey, the discov- 
erer of the circulation of the blood. You will con- 
stantly find his name quoted, however, as an oppo- 
nent of the doctrine of spontaneous generation; 
but the fact is, and you will see it if you take the 
trouble to look into his works, Harvey believed it 
as profoundly as any man of his time ; but he hap- 
pened to enunciate a very curious proposition — 
that every living thing came from an egg; he did 
not mean to use the word in the sense in which we 
now employ it, he only meant to say that every liv- 

1 Francesco Redi (1626-1698). 



126 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

ing thing originated in a little rounded particle of 
organized substance ; and it is from this circum- 
stance, probably, that the notion of Harvey having 
opposed the doctrine originated. Then came Redi, 
and he proceeded to upset the doctrine in a very 
simple manner. He merely covered the piece of 
meat with some very fine gauze, and then he ex- ■ 
posed it to the same conditions. The result of this 
was that no grubs or insects were produced; he 
proved that the grubs originated from the insects 
who came and deposited their eggs in the meat, 
and that they were hatched by the heat of the sun. 
By this kind of inquiry he thoroughly upset the 
doctrine of spontaneous generation, for his time 
at least. 

Then came the discovery and application of the 
microscope to scientific inquiries, which showed to 
naturalists that besides the organisms which they 
already knew as living beings and plants, there 
were an immense number of minute things which 
could be obtained apparently almost at will from 
decaying vegetable and animal forms. Thus, if 
you took some ordinary black pepper or some hay, 
and steeped it in water, you would find in the 
course of a few days that the water had become 
impregnated with an immense number of animal- 
cules swimming about in all directions. From facts 
of this kind naturalists were led to revive the the- 
ory of spontaneous generation. They were headed 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 127 

here by an English naturalist, — ^Needham/ — and 
afterwards in France by the learned BufFon. They 
said that these things were absolutely begotten in 
the water of the decaying substances out of which 
the infusion was made. It did not matter whether 
you took animal or vegetable matter, you had only 
to steep it in water and expose it, and you would 
soon have plenty of animalcules. They made an 
hypothesis about this which was a very fair one. 
They said, this matter of the animal world, or of 
the higher plants, appears to be dead, but in 
reality it has a sort of dim life about it, which, if 
it is placed under fair conditions, will cause it to 
break up into the forms of these little animalcules, 
and they will go through their lives in the same 
way as the animal or plant of which they once 
formed a part. 

The question now l)ecame very hotly debated. 
Spallanzani,'' an Italian naturalist, took up oppo- 
site views to those of Needham and Buff on, and by 
means of certain experiments he showed that it 
was quite possible to stop the process by boiling 
the water, and closing the vessel in which it was 
contained. " Oh ! " said his opponents ; " but what 
do you know you may be doing when you heat the 
air over the water in this way.^ You may be de- 

^John Turberville Needham (1713-1781), Catholic divine 
and man of science. 

==LazaroSpallanzani (1729-1799). 



128 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY ' 

stroying some property of the air requisite for the 
spontaneous generation of the animalcules." 

However, Spallanzani's views were supposed to 
be upon the right side, and those of the others fell 
into discredit; although the fact was that Spal- 
lanzani had not made good his views. Well, then, 
the subject continued to be revived from time to 
time, and experiments were made by several per- 
sons ; but these experiments were not altogether 
satisfactory. It was found that if you put an in- 
fusion in which animalcules would appear if it were 
exposed to the air into a vessel and boiled it, and 
then sealed up the mouth of the vessel, so that no 
air, save such as had been heated to 212 , could 
reach its contents, that then no animalcules 
would be found; but if you took the same vessel 
and exposed the infusion to the air, then you would 
get animalcules. Furthermore, it was found that 
if you connected the mouth of the vessel with a 
red-hot tube in such a way that the air would have 
to pass through the tube before reaching the in- 
fusion, that then you would get no animalcules. 
Yet another thing was noticed: if you took two 
flasks containing the same kind of infusion, and 
left one entirely exposed to the air, and in the 
mouth of the other placed a ball of cotton wool, 
so that the air would have to filter itself through 
it before reaching the infusion, that then, although 
you might have plenty of animalcules in the first 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 129 

flask, you would certainly obtain none from the 
second. 

These experiments, you see, all tended towards 
one conclusion — that the infusoria were devel- 
oped from little minute spores or eggs which were 
constantly floating in the atmosphere, and which 
lose their power of germination if subjected to 
heat. But one observer ^ now made another ex- 
periment, which seemed to go entirely the other 
way, and puzzled him altogether. He took some 
of this boiled infusion that I have been speaking 
of, and by the use of a mercurial bath — a kind of 
trough used in laboratories — he deftly inverted a 
vessel containing the infusion into the mercury, 
so that the latter reached a little beyond the level 
of the mouth of the inverted vessel. You see that 
he thus had a quantity of the infusion shut 
off^ from any possible communication with the 
outer air by being inverted upon a bed of 
mercury. 

He then prepared some pure oxygen and nitro- 
gen gases, and passed them by means of a tube 
going from the outside of the vessel, up through 
the mercury into the infusion ; so that he thus had 
it exposed to a perfectly pure atmosphere of the 
same constituents as the external air. Of course, 
he expected he would get no infusorial animalcules 
at all in that infusion; but, to his great dismay 

; iTheodor Schwann (1810-1882), a German physiologist. 



ISO THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

and discomfiture, he found he almost always did 
get them. 

Furthermore, it has been found that experiments 
made in the manner described above answer well 
with most infusions ; but that if you fill the vessel 
with boiled milk, and then stop the neck with cot- 
ton-wool, you will have infusoria. So that you see 
there were two experiments that brought you to 
one kind of conclusion, and three to another ; which 
was a most unsatisfactory state of things to arrive 
at in a scientific inquiry. 

Some few years after this, the question began 
to be very hotly discussed in France. There was 
M. Pouchet,^ a professor at Rouen, a very learned 
man, but certainly not a very rigid experimentalist. 
He published a number of experiments of his own, 
some of which were very ingenious, to show that 
if you went to work in a proper way, there was a 
truth in the doctrine of spontaneous generation. 
Well, it was one of the most fortunate things in 
the world that M. Pouchet took up this question, 
because it induced a distinguished French chemist, 
M. Pasteur, to take up the question on the other 
side; and he has certainly worked it out in the 
most perfect manner. I am glad to say, too, that 
he has published his researches in time to enable 
me to give you an account of them. He verified 
all the experiments which I have just mentioned 
1 Felix- Archimede Pouchet (1800-1872). 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 131 

to you — and then finding those extraordinary 
anomalies, as in the case of the mercury bath and 
the milk, he set himself to work to discover their 
nature. In the case of milk he found it to be a 
question of temperature. Milk in a fresh state 
is slightly alkaline ; and it is a very curious cir- 
cumstance, but this very slight degree of alkalinity 
seems to have the effect of preserving the organ- 
isms which fall into it from the air from being de- 
stroyed at a temperature of 212°, which is the 
boiling point. But if you raise the temperature 
10° when you boil it, the milk behaves like every- 
thing else ; and if the air with which it comes in 
contact, after being boiled at this temperature, is 
passed through a red-hot tube, you will not get a 
trace of organisms. 

He then turned his attention to the mercury 
bath, and found on examination that the surface 
of the mercury was almost always covered with a 
very fine dust. He found that even the mercury 
itself was positively full of organic matters ; that 
from being constantly exposed to the air, it had 
collected an immense number of these infusorial 
organisms from the air. Well, under these cir- 
cumstances he felt that the case was quite clear, and 
that the mercury was not what it had appeared 
to M. Schwann to be, — a bar to the admission of 
these organisms ; but that, in reality, it acted as a 
reservoir from which the infusion was immediately 



132 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

supplied with the large quantity that had so puz- 
zled him. 

But not content with explaining the experiments 
of others, M. Pasteur went to work to satisfy him- 
self completely. He said to himself : " If my view 
is right, and if, in point of fact, all these appear- 
ances of spontaneous generation are altogether due 
to the falling of minute germs suspended in the 
atmosphere, — why, I ought not only to be able to 
show the germs, but I ought to be able to catch 
and sow them, and produce the resulting organ- 
isms." He, accordingly, constructed a very in- 
genious apparatus to enable him to accomplish the 
trapping of the " germ dust " in the air. He fixed 
in the window of his room a glass tube, in the cen- 
tre of which he had placed a ball of gun-cotton, 
which, as you all know, is ordinary cotton-wool, 
which, from having been steeped in strong acid, is 
converted into a substance of great explosive 
power. It is also soluble in alcohol and ether. 
One end of the glass tube was, of course, open to 
the external air; and at the other end of it he 
placed an aspirator, a contrivance for causing a 
current of the external air to pass through the 
tube. He kept this apparatus going for four-and- 
;:^' twenty hours, and then removed the dusted gun- 
cotton, and dissolved it in alcohol and ether. He 
then allowed this to stand for a few hours, and 
the result was, that a very fine dust was gradually 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 133 

deposited at the bottom of it. That dust, on being 
transferred to the stage of a microscope, was 
found to contain an enormous number of starch 
grains. You know that the materials of our food 
and the greater portion of plants are composed of 
starch, and we are constantly making use of it in 
a variety of ways, so that there is always a quan- 
tity of it suspended in the air. It is these starch 
grains which form many of those bright specks 
that we see dancing in a ray of light sometimes. 
But besides these, M. Pasteur found also an im- 
mense number of other organic substances such 
as spores of fungi, which had been floating 
about in the air and had got caged in this way. 

He went farther, and said to himself : " If these 
really are the things that give rise to the appear- 
ance of spontaneous generation, I ought to be able 
to take a ball of this dusted gun-cotton and put it 
into one of my vessels, containing that boiled in- 
fusion which has been kept away from the air, and 
in which no infusoria are at present developed, and 
then, if I am right, the introduction of this gun- 
cotton will give rise to organisms." 

Accordingly, he took one of these vessels of in- 
fusion, which had been kept eighteen months, 
without the least appearance of life in it, and by a 
most ingenious contrivance, he managed to break 
it open and introduce such a ball of gun-cotton, 
without allowing the infusion or the cotton ball to 



134 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

come Into contact with any air but that which had 
been subjected to a red heat, and in twenty-four 
hours he had the satisfaction of finding all the in- 
dications of what had been hitherto called spon- 
taneous generation. He had succeeded in catch- 
ing the germs and developing organisms in the way 
he had anticipated. 

It now struck him that the truth of his conclu- 
sions might be demonstrated without all the ap- 
paratus he had employed. To do this, he took 
some decaying animal or vegetable substance, such 
as urine, which is an extremely decomposable sub- 
stance, or the juice of yeast, or perhaps some other 
artificial preparation, and filled a vessel having a 
long tubular neck with it. He then boiled the 
liquid and bent that long neck into an S shape or 
zig-zag, leaving it open at the end. The infusion 
then gave no trace of any appearance of spon- 
taneous generation, however long it might be left, 
as all the germs in the air were deposited in the be- 
ginning of the bent neck. He then cut the tube 
close to the vessel, and allowed the ordinary air 
to have free and direct access ; and the result of 
that was the appearance of organisms in it, as soon 
as the infusion had been allowed to stand long 
enough to allow of the growth of those it received 
from the air, which was about forty-eight hours. 
The result of M. Pasteur's experiments proved, 
therefore, in the most conclusive manner, that all 



SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 1S5 

the appearances of spontaneous generation arose 
from nothing more than the deposition of the 
germs of organisms which were constantly floating 
in the air. 

To this conclusion, however, the objection was 
made, that if that were the cause, then the air 
would contain such an enormous number of these 
germs, that it would be a continual fog. But M. 
Pasteur replied that they are not there in anything 
like the number we might suppose, and that an 
exaggerated view has been held on that subject; he 
showed that the chances of animal or vegetable 
life appearing in infusions depend entirely on the 
conditions under which they are exposed. If they 
are exposed to the ordinary atmosphere around 
us, why, of course, you may have organisms ap- 
pearing early. But, on the other hand, if they 
are exposed to air at a great height, or in some 
very quiet cellar, you will often not find a single 
trace of life. 

So that M. Pasteur arrived at last at the clear 
and definite result, that all these appearances are 
like the case of the worms in the piece of meat, 
which was refuted by Redi, simply germs carried 
by the air and deposited in the liquids in which 
they afterwards appear. For my own part, I con- 
ceive that, with the particulars of M. Pasteur's 
experiments before us, we cannot fail to arrive 
at his conclusions ; and that the doctrine of spon- 



136 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

taneous generation has received a final coup de 
grace} 

You, of course, understand that all this in no 
way interferes with the possibility of the fabrica- 
tion of organic matters by the direct method to 
which I have referred, remote as that possibility 
may be. 

^ Deathblow. 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN* 

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

Our review of modern Darwinism might fitly 
have terminated with the preceding chapter; but 
the immense interest that attaches to the origin of 
the human race, and the amount of misconception 
which prevails regarding the essential teachings of 
Darwin's theory on this question, as well as regard- 
ing my own special views upon it, induce me to 
devote a final chapter to its discussion. 

To any one who considers the structure of man's 
body, even in the most superficial manner, it must 
be evident that it is the body of an animal, differ- 
ing greatly, it is true, from the bodies of all other 
animals, but agreeing with them in all essential 
features. The bony structure of man classes him 
as a vertebrate; the mode of suckling his young 
classes him as a mammal; his blood, his muscles, 
and his nerves, the structure of his heart with its 
veins and arteries, his lungs and his whole respira- 
tory and circulatory systems, all closely corre- 
spond to those of other mammals, and are often 

^Darwinism, London, 1889, Chapter XV. Reprinted 
through the generous permission of The Macmillan Com- 
pany. 

137 



138 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 



i 



almost identical with them. He possesses the same 
number of limbs terminating in the same number 
of digits as belong fundamentally to the mam- 
malian class. His senses are identical with theirs, 
and his organs of sense are the same in number 
and occupy the same relative position. Every de- 
tail of structure which is common to the mammalia 
as a class is found also in man, while he only differs 
from them in such ways and degrees as the various j 

species or groups of mammals differ from each 
other. If, then, we have good reason to believe 
that every existing group of mammalia has de- 
scended from some common ancestral form — 
as we saw to be so completely demonstrated in the 
case of the horse tribe, — and that each family, 
each order, and even the whole class must 
similarly have descended from some much more an- 
cient and more generalized type, it would be 
in the highest degree improbable — so improb- 
able as to be almost inconceivable — that man, 
agreeing with them so closely in every detail 
of his structure, should have had some quite 
distinct mode of origin. Let us, then, see what 
other evidence bears upon the question, and whether 
it is sufficient to convert the probability of his ani- 
mal origin into a practical certainty. 

All the higher animals present rudiments of 
organs which, though useless to them, are useful 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 139 

in some allied group, and are believed to have de- 
scended from a common ancestor in which they 
were useful. Thus there are in ruminants rudi- 
ments of incisor teeth which, in some species, never 
cut through the gums ; many lizards have external 
rudimentary legs ; while many birds, as the Ap- 
teryx, have quite rudimentary wings. Now man 
possesses similar rudiments, sometimes constantly, 
sometimes only occasionally present, which serve 
intimately to connect his bodily structure with that 
of the lower animals. Many animals, for example, 
have a special muscle for moving or twitching the 
skin. In man there are remnants of this in cer- 
tain parts of the body, especially in the forehead, 
enabling us to raise our eyebrows ; but some per- 
sons have it in other parts. A few persons are 
able to move the whole scalp so as to throw off 
any object placed on the head, and this property 
has been proved, in one case, to be inherited. In 
the outer fold of the ear there is sometimes a pro- 
jecting point, corresponding in position to the 
pointed ear of many animals, and believed to be a 
rudiment of it. In the alimentary canal there is a 
rudiment — the vermiform appendage of the cascum 
— which is not only useless, but is sometimes a 
cause of disease and death in man ; yet in many 
vegetable feeding animals it is very long, and even 
in the orang-utan it is of considerable length and 
convoluted. So, man possesses rudimentary bones 



140 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

of a tail concealed beneath the skin, and, in some 
rare cases, this forms a minute external tail. 

The variability of every part of man's structure 
is very great, and many of these variations tend 
to approximate towards the structure of other 
animals. The courses of the arteries are eminently 
variable, so that for surgical purposes it has been 
necessary to determine the probable proportion of 
each variation. The muscles are so variable that 
in fifty cases the muscles of the foot were found to 
be not strictly alike in any two, and in some the 
deviations were considerable; while in thirty-six 
subjects Mr. J. Wood observed no fewer than 558 
muscular variations. The same author states that 
in a single male subject there were no fewer than 
seven muscular variations, all of which plainly 
represented muscles proper to various kinds of 
apes. The muscles of the hands and arms — ^parts 
which are so eminently characteristic of man — 
are extremely liable to vary, so as to resemble the 
corresponding muscles of the lower animals. That 
such variations are due to reversion to a former 
state of existence Mr. Darwin thinks highly prob- 
able, and he adds : " It is quite incredible that a 
man should, through mere accident, abnormally 
resemble certain apes in no less than seven of his 
muscles, if there had been no genetic connection be- 
tween them. On the other hand, if man is de- 
scended from some ape-like creature, no valid rea- 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 141 

son can be assigned why certain muscles should 
not suddenly reappear after an interval of many 
thousand generations, in the same manner as, with 
horses, asses, and mules, dark colored stripes sud- 
denly reappear on the legs and shoulders, after 
an interval of hundreds, or more probably of thou- 
sands, of generations." ^ 

The progressive development of any vertebrate 
from the ovum or minute embryonic egg affords 
one of the most marvellous chapters in Natural 
History. We see the contents of the ovum under- 
going numerous definite changes, its interior divid- 
ing and subdividing till it consists of a mass of 
cells ; then a groove appears marking out the me- 
dian line or vertebral column of the future animal, 
and thereafter are slowly developed the various 
essential organs of the body. After describing in 
some detail what takes place in the case of the 
ovum of the dog, Professor Huxley continues : 
" The history of the development of any other ver- 
tebrate animal, lizard, snake, frog, or fish, tells the 
same story. There is always, to begin with, an 
egg having the same essential structure as that of 
the dog ; the yelk of that egg undergoes division 
or segmentation, as it is called; the ultimate prod- 
ucts of that segmentation constitute the building 

^Descent of Man, pp. 41-43; also pp. 13-15. [Author's 
note.] 



U2 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

materials for the body of the young animal ; and 
this is built up round a primitive groove, in the 
floor of which a notochord is developed. Further- 
more, there is a period in which the young of all 
these animals resemble one another, not merely in 
outward form, but in all essentials of structure, so 
closely, that the differences between them are in- 
considerable, while in their subsequent course they 
diverge more and more widely from one another. 
And it is a general law that the more closely any 
animals resemble one another in adult structure, 
the longer and the more intimately do their em- 
bryos resemble one another; so that, for example, 
the embryos of a snake and of a lizard remain like 
one another longer than do those of a snake and 
a bird ; and the embryos of a dog and of a cat 
remain like one another for a far longer period 
than do those of a dog and a bird, or of a dog 
and an opossum, or even than those of a dog and a 
monkey." ^ 

We thus see that the study of development 
affords a test of affinity in animals that are exter- 
nally very much unlike each other; and we nat- 
urally ask how this applies to man. Is he devel- 
oped in a different way from other mammals, as 
we should certainly expect if he has had a distinct 
and altogether different origin ? " The reply," 
says Professor Huxley, " is not doubtful for a mo- 
^ Man's Place in Nature, p. 64. [Author's note.] 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 143 

nient. Without question, the mode of origin and 
the early stages of the development of man are 
identical with those of the animals immediately be- 
low him in the scale." And again he tells us : " It 
is very long before the body of the young human 
being can be readily discriminated from that of the 
young puppy ; but at a tolerably early period the 
two become distinguishable by the different forms 
of their adjuncts, the yelk-sac and the allantois ; " 
and after describing these differences he continues : 
" But exactly in those respects in which the devel- 
oping man differs from the dog, he resembles the 
ape. ... So that it is only quite in the later 
stages of development that the young human being 
presents marked differences from the young ape, 
while the latter departs as much from the dog in 
its development as the man does. Startling as this 
last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably 
true, and it alone appears to me sufficient to place 
beyond all doubt the structural unity of man with 
the rest of the animal world, and more particularly 
and closely with the apes." ^ 

A few of the curious details in which man passes 
through stages common to the lower animals may 
be mentioned. At one stage the os coccyx projects 
like a true tail, extending considerably beyond the 
rudimentary legs. In the seventh month the con- 
volutions of the brain resemble those of an adult 

* Man's Place in Nature, p. 67. [Author's note.] 



144 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

baboon. The great toe, so characteristic of man, 
forming the fulcrum which most assists him in 
standing erect, in an early stage of the embryo 
is much shorter than the other toes, and instead 
of being parallel with them, projects at an angle 
from the side of the foot, thus corresponding with 
its permanent condition in the quadrumana. Nu- 
merous other examples might be quoted, all illus- 
trating the same general law. 

Though the fact is so well known, it is certainly 
one of profound significance that many animal dis- 
eases can be communicated to man, since it shows 
similarit}^ if not identity, in the minute structure 
of the tissues, the nature of the blood, the nerves, 
and the brain. Such diseases as hydrophobia, 
variola, the glanders, cholera, herpes, etc., can be 
transmitted from animals to man or the reverse; 
while monkeys are liable to many of the same non- 
contagious diseases as we are. Rengger, who care- 
fully observed the common monkey (Cebus Azarce) 
in Paraguay, found it liable to catarrh, with the 
usual symptoms, terminating sometimes in con- 
sumption. These monkeys also suffered from apo- 
plexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in 
the eye. Medicines produced the same effect upon 
them as upon us. Many kinds of monkeys have a 
strong taste for tea, coffee, spirits, and even to- 
bacco. These facts show the similarity of the 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 145 

nerves of taste in monkeys and in ourselves, and 
that their whole nervous system is affected in a 
similar way. Even the parasites, both external 
and internal, that affect man are not altogether 
peculiar to him, but belong to the same families or 
genera as those which infest animals, and in one 
case, scabies, even the same species/ These curious 
facts seem quite inconsistent with the idea that 
man's bodily structure and nature are altogether 
distinct from those of animals, and have had a 
different origin; while the facts are just what we 
should expect if he has been produced by descent 
with modification from some common ancestor. 

By universal consent we see in the monkey tribe 
a caricature of humanity. Their faces, their 
hands, their actions and expressions present lu- 
dicrous resemblances to our own. But there is one 
group of this great tribe in which this resem.blance 
is greatest, and they have hence been called the an- 
thropoid or man-like apes. These are few in num- 
ber, and inhabit only the equatorial regions of 
Africa and Asia, countries where the climate is 
most uniform, the forests densest, and the supply 
of fruit abundant throughout the year. These ani- 
mals are now comparatively well known, consisting 
of the orang-utan of Borneo and Sumatra, the 
chimpanzee and the gorilla of West Africa, and the 
^ The Descent of Man, pp. 7, 8. [Author's note.] 



146 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

group of gibbons or long-armed apes, consisting 
of many species and inhabiting Southeastern Asia 
and the larger Malay Islands. These last are far 
less like man than the other three, one or other of 
which has at various times been claimed to be the 
most man-like of the apes and our nearest relations 
in the animal kingdom. The question of the de- 
gree of resemblance of these animals to ourselves 
is one of great interest, leading, as it does, to some 
important conclusions as to our origin and geo- 
logical antiquity, and we will therefore briefly 
consider it. 

If we compare the skeletons of the orang or 
chimpanzee with that of man, we find them to be 
a kind of distorted copy, every bone correspond- 
ing (with very few exceptions), but altered some- 
what in size, proportions, and position. So great 
is this resemblance that it led Professor Owen to 
remark : " I cannot shut my eyes to the signifi- 
cance of that all-pervading similitude of structure 
— ever}'^ tooth, every bone, strictly homologous — 
which makes the determination of the difference 
between Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's diffi- 
culty." 

The actual diff^erences in the skeletons of these 
apes and that of man — that is, differences depend- 
ent on the presence or absence of certain bones, 
and not on their form or position — ^have been 
enumerated by Mr. Mivart as follows : ( 1 ) In the 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 147 

breastbone consisting of but two bones, man agrees 
with the gibbons ; the chimpanzee and gorilla hav- 
ing this part consisting of seven bones in a single 
series, while in the orang thej are arranged in a 
double series of ten bones. (2) The normal num- 
ber of the ribs in the orang and some gibbons is 
twelve pairs, as in man, while in the chimpanzee 
and gorilla there are thirteen pairs. (3) The 
orang and the gibbons also agree with man in hav- 
ing five lumbar vertebras, while in the gorilla and 
the chimpanzee there are but four, and sometimes 
only three. (4) The gorilla and chimpanzee agree 
with man in having eight small bones in the wrist, 
while the orang and the gibbons, as well as all other 
monkeys, have nine.^ 

The differences in the form, size, and attach- 
ments of the various bones, muscles, and other or- 
gans of these apes and man are very numerous and 
exceedingly complex, sometimes one species, some- 
times another agreeing most nearly with ourselves, 
thus presenting a tangled web of affinities which it 
is very difficult to unravel. Estimated by the skele- 
ton alone, the chimpanzee and gorilla seem nearer 
to man than the orang, which last is also inferior 
as presenting certain aberrations in the muscles. 

^ Man and Apes. By St. George Mivart, F.R.S., 1873. 
It is an interesting fact (for which I am indebted to Mr. 
E. B. Poulton) that the human embryo possesses the extra 
rib and wrist-bone referred to above in (2) and (4) as 
occurring in some of the apes. [Author's note.] 



148 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

In the form of the ear the gorilla is more human 
than any other ape, while in the tongue the orang 
is the more man-like. In the stomach and liver the 
gibbons approach nearest to man ; then come the 
orang and chimpanzee, while the gorilla has a de- 
graded liver more resembling that of the lower 
monkeys and baboons. 

We come now to that part of his organization 
in which man is so much higher than all the lower 
animals — the brain ; and here, Mr. Mivart informs 
us, the orang stands highest in rank. The height 
of the orang's cerebrum in front is greater in pro- 
portion than in either the chimpanzee or the 
gorilla. " On comparing the brain of man with 
the brains of the orang, chimpanzee, and baboon, 
we find a successive decrease in the frontal lobe, 
and a successive and very great increase in the 
relative size of the occipital lobe. Concomitantly 
with this increase and decrease, certain folds of 
brain substance, called ' bridging convolutions,' 
which in man are conspicuously interposed between 
the parietal and occipital lobes, seem as utterly 
to disappear in the chimpanzee, as they do in the 
baboon. In the orang, however, though much re- 
duced, they are still to be distinguished. . ,. . The 
actual and absolute mass of the brain is, however, 
slightly greater in the chimpanzee than in the 
orang, as is the relative vertical extent of the mid- 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 149 

die part of the cerebrum, although, as already 
stated, the frontal portion is higher in the orang; 
while, according to M. Gratiolet, the gorilla is not 
only inferior to the orang in cerebral development, 
but even to his smaller African congener, the chim- 
panzee." ^ 

On the whole, then, we find that no one of the 
great apes can be positively asserted to be nearest 
to man in structure. Each of them approaches 
him in certain characteristics, while in others it is 
widely removed, giving the idea, so consonant with 
the theory of evolution as developed by Darwin, 
that all are derived from a common ancestor, from^ 
which the existing anthropoid apes as well as man 
have diverged. When, however, we turn from the 
details of anatomy to peculiarities of external form 
and motions, we find that in a variety of characters 
all these apes resemble each other and differ from 
man, so that we may fairly say that while they 
have diverged somewhat from each other, they have 
diverged much more widely from ourselves. Let 
us briefly enumerate some of these differences. 

All apes have large canine teeth, while in man 
these are no longer than the adjacent incisors or 
premolars, the whole forming a perfectly even 
series. In apes the arms are proportionately much 
longer than in man, while the thighs are much 

* Man and Apes, pp. 138, 144. [Author's note.] 



150 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

shorter. No ape stands really erect, a posture 
which is natural in man. The thumb is propor- 
tionately larger in man, and more perfectly 
opposable than is that of any ape. The foot of 
man differs largely from that of all apes, in the 
horizontal sole, the projecting heel, the short toes, 
and the powerful great toe firmly attached parallel 
to the other toes; all perfectly adapted for main- 
taining the erect posture, and for free motion with- 
out any aid from the arms or hands. In apes the 
foot is formed almost exactly like our hand, with 
a large thumb-like great toe quite free from the 
other toes, and so articulated as to be opposable to 
them ; forming with the long finger-like toes a per- 
fect grasping hand. The sole cannot be placed 
horizontally on the ground; but when standing on 
a level surface the animal rests on the outer edge 
of the foot with the finger and thumb-like toes 
partly closed, while the hands are placed on the 
ground resting on the knuckles. . . . 

The four limbs, with the peculiarly formed feet 
and hands, are those of arboreal animals which only 
occasionally and awkwardly move on level ground. 
The arms are used in progression equally with the 
feet, and the hands are only adapted for uses simi- 
lar to those of our hands when the animal is at 
rest, and then but clumsily. Lastly, the apes are 
all hairy animals, like the majority of other mam- 
mals, man alone having a smooth and almost naked 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 151 

skin. These numerous and striking differences, 
even more than those of the skeleton and internal 
anatomy, point to an enormously remote epoch 
when the race that was ultimately to develop into 
man diverged from that other stock which con- 
tinued the animal type and ultimately produced 
the existing varieties of anthropoid apes. 

The facts now very briefly summarized amount 
almost to a demonstration that man, in his bodily 
structure, has been derived from the lower animals, 
of which he is the culminating development. In 
his possession of rudimentary structures which are 
functional in some of the mammalia ; in the numer- 
ous variations of his muscles and other organs 
agreeing with characters which are constant in 
some apes; in his embryonic development, abso- 
lutely identical in character with that of mammalia 
in general, and closely resembling in its details that 
of the higher quadrumana ; in the diseases which 
he has in common with other mammalia ; and in the 
wonderful approximation of his skeleton to those 
of one or other of the anthropoid apes, we have 
an amount of evidence in this direction which it 
seems impossible to explain away. And this evi- 
dence will appear more forcible if we consider for 
a moment what the rejection of it implies. For 
the only alternative supposition is, that man has 
been specially created — that is to say, has been 



152 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

produced in some quite different way from other 
animals and altogether independently of them. 
But in that case the rudimentary structures, the 
animal-like variations, the identical course of de- 
velopment, and all the other animal characteristics 
he possesses are deceptive, and inevitably lead us, 
as thinking beings making use of the reason which 
is our noblest and most distinctive feature, into 
gross error. 

We cannot believe, however, that a careful study 
of the facts of nature leads to conclusions directly 
opposed to the truth; and as we seek in vain, in 
our physical structure and the course of its devel- 
opment, for any indication of an origin independ- 
ent of the rest of the animal world, we are com- 
pelled to reject the idea of " special creation " for 
man, as being entirely unsupported by facts as 
well as in the highest degree improbable. 

The evidence we now possess of the exact nature 
of the resemblance of man to the various species of 
anthropoid apes, shows us that he has little special 
affinity for any one rather than another species, 
while he differs from them all in several important 
characters in which they agree with each other. 
The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is, that 
his points of affinity connect him with the whole 
group, while his special peculiarities equally sep- 
arate him from the whole group, and that he must, 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 15S 

therefore, have diverged from the common ances- 
tral form before the existing types of anthropoid 
apes had diverged from each other. Now, this di- 
vergence almost certainly took place as early as 
the Miocene period, because in the Upper Miocene 
deposits of Western Europe remains of two species 
of ape have been found allied to the gibbons, one 
of them, Dryopithecus, nearly as large as a man, 
and believed by M. Lartet to have approached man 
in its dentition more than the existing apes. We 
seem hardly, therefore, to have reached, in the 
Upper Miocene, the epoch of the common ancestor 
of man and the anthropoids. 

The evidence of the antiquity of man himself is 
also scanty, and takes us but very little way back 
into the past. We have clear proof of his existence 
in Europe in the latter stages of the glacial epoch, 
with many indications of his presence in inter- 
glacial or even pre-glacial times ; while both the 
actual remains and the works of man found in the 
auriferous gravels of California deep under lava- 
flows of Pliocene age show that he existed in the 
New World at least as early as in the Old.^ These 
earliest remains of man have been received with 
doubt, and even with ridicule, as if there were some 
extreme improbability in them. But, in point of 

^ For a sketch of the evidence of Man's Antiquity in 
America, see the Nineteenth Century for November, 1887. 
[Author's note.] 



154 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

fact, the wonder is that human remains have not 
been found more frequently in pre-glacial deposits. 
Referring to the most ancient fossil remains found 
in Europe, — the Engis and Neanderthal crania, — 
Professor Huxley makes the following weighty re- 
mark : " In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil 
remains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem 
to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower 
pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, 
probably, become what he is." The Californian 
remains and work of art, above referred to, give 
no indication of a specially low form of man ; and 
it remains an unsolved problem why no traces of 
the long line of man's ancestors, back to the re- 
mote period when be first branched off from the 
pithecoid type, have yet been discovered. 

It has been objected by some writers — notably 
by Professor Boyd Dawkins — that man did not 
probably exist in Pliocene times, because almost all 
the known mammalia of that epoch are distinct spe- 
cies from those now living on the earth, and that 
the same changes of the environment which led to 
the modification of other mammalian species would 
also have led to a change in man. But this argu- 
ment overlooks the fact that man differs essentially 
from all other mammals in this respect, that 
whereas any important adaptation to new condi- 
tions can be effected in them only by a change in 
bodily structure, man is able to adapt himself to 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 155 

much greater changes of conditions by a mental 
development leading him to the use of fire, of tools, 
of clothing, of improved dwellings, of nets and 
snares, and of agriculture. By the help of these, 
without any change whatever in his bodily struc- 
ture, he has been able to spread over and occupy 
the whole earth; to dwell securely in forest, plain, 
or mountain; to inhabit alike the burning desert 
or the arctic wastes ; to cope with every kind of 
wild beast, and to provide himself with food in dis- 
tricts where, as an animal trusting to nature's 
unaided productions, he would have starved/ 

It follows, therefore, that from the time when 
the ancestral man first walked erect, with hands 
freed from any active part in locomotion, and 
when his brain-power became sufficient to cause him 
to use his hands in making weapons and tools, 
houses and clothing, to use fire for cooking, and 
to plant seeds or roots to supply himself with 
stores of food, the power of natural selection would 
cease to act in producing modifications of his body, 
but would continuously advance his mind through 
the development of its organ, the brain. Hence 
man may have become truly man — the species, 
Homo sapiens — even in the Miocene period ; and 
while all other mammals were becoming modified 

^ This subject was first discussed in an article in the 
Anthropological Review, May, 1864, and republished in my 
Contributions to Natural Selection, chap, ix, in 1870. [Au- 
thor's note.] 



156 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

from age to age under the influence of ever chang- 
ing physical and biological conditions, he would be 
advancing mainly in intelligence, but perhaps also 
in stature, and by that advance alone would be 
able to maintain himself as the master of all other 
animals and as the most widespread occupier of 
the earth. It is quite in accordance with this view 
that we find the most pronounced distinction be- 
tween man and the anthropoid apes in the size and 
complexity of his brain. Thus, Professor Huxley 
tells us that " it may be doubted whether a healthy 
human adult brain ever weighed less than 31 or 32 
ounces, or that the heaviest gorilla brain has ex- 
ceeded 20 ounces," although " a full-grown gorilla 
is probably pretty nearly twice as heavy as a 
Bosjes man,^ or as many an European woman." 
The average human brain, however, weighs 48 or 
49 ounces, and if we take the average ape brain at 
only 2 ounces less than the very largest gorilla's 
brain, or 18 ounces, we shall see better the enor- 
mous increase which has taken place in the brain 
of man since the time when he branched off from 
the apes ; and this increase will be still greater if 
we consider that the brains of apes, like those of 
all other mammals, have also increased from earlier 
to later geological times. 

^ The Bosjesmans, or Bushmen, are a nomadic people of 
South Africa. 

^ Man's Place in Nature, p. 102. [Author's note.] 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 157 

If these various considerations are taken into 
account, we must conclude that the essential fea- 
tures of man's structure as compared with that of 
apes — his erect posture and free hands — were ac- 
quired at a comparatively early period, and were, 
in fact, the characteristics which gave him his 
superiority over other mammals, and started him 
on the line of development which has led to his 
conquest of the world. But during this long and 
steady development of brain and intellect, man- 
kind must have continuously increased in numbers 
and in the area which they occupied — they must 
have formed what Darwin terms a " dominant 
race." For had they been few in numbers and 
confined to a limited area, they could hardly have 
successfully struggled against the numerous fierce 
carnivora of that period, and against those ad- 
verse influences which led to the extinction of so 
many more powerful animals. A large population 
spread over an extensive area is also needed to 
supply an adequate number of brain variations for 
man's progressive improvement. But this large 
population and long-continued development in a 
single line of advance renders it the more difficult 
to account for the complete absence of human or 
prehuman remains in all those deposits which have 
furnished, in such rich abundance, the remains of 
other land animals. It is true that the remains of 
apes are also very rare, and we may well suppose 



158 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

that the superior intelligence of man led him to 
avoid that extensive destruction by flood or in 
morass which seems to have often overwhelmed 
other animals. Yet, when we consider that even 
in our own day men are not un frequently over- 
whelmed by volcanic eruptions, as in Java and 
Japan, or carried away in vast numbers by floods, 
as in Bengal and China, it seems impossible but 
that ample remains of Miocene and Pliocene man do 
exist buried in the most recent layers of the earth's 
crust, and that more extended research or some for- 
tunate discovery will some day bring them to light. 

It has usually been considered that the ancestral 
form of man originated in the tropics, where vege- 
tation is most abundant and the climate most 
equable. But there are some important objections 
to this view. The anthropoid apes, as well as most 
of the monkey tribe, are essentially arboreal in 
their structure, whereas the great distinctive char- 
acter of man is his special adaptation to terrestrial 
locomotion. We can hardly suppose, therefore, 
that he originated in a forest region, where fruits 
to be obtained by climbing are the chief vegetable 
food. It is more probable that he began his ex- 
istence on the open plains or high plateaus of the 
temperate or subtropical zone, where the seeds of 
indigenous cereals and numerous herbivora, ro- 
dents, and game birds, with fishes and mollusks in 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 159 

the lakes, rivers, and seas supplied him with an 
abundance of varied food. In such a region he 
would develop skill as a hunter, trapper, or fisher- 
man, and later as a herdsman and cultivator, — a 
succession of which we find indications in the palaeo- 
lithic and neolithic races of Europe. 

In seeking to determine the particular areas in 
which his earliest traces are likely to be found, we 
are restricted to some portion of the Eastern 
Hemisphere, where alone the anthropoid apes exist, 
or have apparently ever existed. 

There is good reason to believe, also, that Africa 
must be excluded, because it is known to have been 
separated from the northern continent in early 
tertiary times, and to have acquired its existing 
fauna of the higher mammalia by a later union 
with that continent after the separation from it 
of Madagascar, an island which has preserved for 
us a sample, as it were, of the early African mam- 
malian fauna, from which not only the anthropoid 
apes, but all the higher quadrumana are absent.^ 
There remains only the great Euro-Asiatic conti- 
nent; and its enormous plateaus, extending from 
Persia right across Tibet and Siberia to Man- 
churia, afford an area, some part or other of 
which probably offered suitable conditions, in late 

^ For a full discussion of this question, see the author's 
Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. i, p. 285. [Au- 
thor's note.] 



160 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

Miocene or early Pliocene times, for the develop- 
ment of ancestral man. 

It is in this area that we still find that type of 
mankind — ^the Mongolian — which retains a color 
of the skin midway between the black or brown- 
black of the negro and the ruddy or olive-white 
of the Caucasian types, a color which still pre- 
vails over all Northern Asia, over the American 
continents, and over much of Polynesia. From this 
primary tint arose, under the influence of varied 
conditions, and probably in correlation with con- 
stitutional changes adapted to peculiar climates, 
the varied tints which still exist among mankind. 
If the reasoning by which this conclusion is 
reached be sound, and all the earlier stages of 
man's development from an animal form occurred 
in the area now indicated, we can better under- 
stand how it is that we have as yet met with no 
traces of the missing links, or even of man's ex- 
istence during late tertiary times, because no part 
of the world is so entirely unexplored by the geolo- 
gist as this very region. The area in question is 
sufficiently extensive and varied to admit of pri- 
meval man having attained to a considerable popu- 
lation, and having developed his full human char- 
acteristics, both physical and mental, before there 
was any need for him to migrate beyond its limits. 
One of these earliest important migrations was 
probably into Africa, where, spreading westward, 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 16,1 

he became modified in color and hair in correlation 
with physiological changes adapting him to the 
climate of the equatorial lowlands. Spreading 
northwestward into Europe the moist and cool 
climate led to a modification of an opposite char- 
acter, and thus may have arisen the three great 
human types which still exist. Somewhat later, 
probably, he spread eastward into Northwest 
America and soon scattered himself over the whole 
continent ; and all this may well have occurred in 
early or middle Pliocene times. Thereafter, at 
very long intervals, successive waves of migration 
carried him into every part of the habitable world, 
and by conquest and intermixture led ultimately to 
that puzzling gradation of types which the eth- 
nologist in vain seeks to unravel. 

From the foregoing discussion it will be seen 
that I fully accept Mr. Darwin's conclusion 
as to the essential identity of man's bodily 
structure with that of the higher mammalia, 
and his descent from som.e ancestral form 
common to man and the anthropoid apes. The 
evidence of such descent appears to me to be 
overwhelming and conclusive. Again, as to 
the cause and method of such descent and modifica- 
tion, we may admit, at all events provisionally, 
that the laws of variation and natural selection, 
acting through the struggle for existence and the 



162 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

continual need of more perfect adaptation to the 
physical and biological environments, may have 
brought about, first that perfection of bodily 
structure in which he is so far above all other ani- 
mals, and in coordination with it the larger and 
more developed brain, by means of which he has 
been able to utilize that structure in the more and 
more complete subjection of the whole animal and 
vegetable kingdoms to his service. 

But this is only the beginning of Mr. Darwin's 
work, since he goes on to discuss the moral nature 
and mental faculties of man, and derives these too 
by gradual modification and development from the 
lower animals. Although, perhaps, nowhere dis- 
tinctly formulated, his whole argument tends to 
the conclusion that man's entire nature and all his 
faculties, whether moral, intellectual, or spiritual, 
have been derived from their rudiments in the 
lower animals, in the same manner and by the ac- 
tion of the same general laws as his physical struc- 
ture has been derived. As this conclusion appears 
to me not to be supported by adequate evidence, 
and to be directly opposed to many well-ascer- 
tained facts, I propose to devote a brief space to 
its discussion. 

Mr. Darwin's mode of argument consists in 
showing that the rudiments of most, if not of all, 
the mental and moral faculties of man can be de- 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 163 

tected in some animals. The manifestations of 
intelligence, amounting in some cases to distinct 
acts of reasoning, in many animals, are adduced 
as exhibiting in a much less degree the intelligence 
and reason of man. Instances of curiosity, imita- 
tion, attention, wonder, and memory are given; 
while examples are also adduced which may be in- 
terpreted as proving that animals exhibit kindness 
to their fellows, or manifest pride, contempt, and 
shame. Some are said to have the rudiments of 
language, because they utter several different 
sounds, each of which has a definite meaning to 
their fellows or to their young; others the rudi- 
ments of arithmetic, because they seem to count 
and remember up to three, four, or even five. A 
sense of beauty is imputed to them on account of 
their own bright colors or the use of colored ob- 
jects in their nests; while dogs, cats, and horses 
are said to have imagination, because they appear 
to be disturbed by dreams. Even some distant ap- 
proach to the rudiments of religion is said to he 
found in the deep love and complete submission of 
a dog to his master.^ 

Turning from animals to man, it is shown that 
in the lowest savages many of these faculties are 
very little advanced from the condition in which 
they appear in the higher animals ; while others, al- 

^ For a full discussion of all these points, see Descent of 
Man, chap. iii. [Author's note.] 



164f ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

though fairly well exhibited, are yet greatly infe- 
rior to the point of development they have 
reached in civilized races. In particular, the moral 
sense is said to have been developed from the social 
instincts of savages, and to depend mainly on the 
enduring discomfort produced by any action 
which excites the general disapproval of the tribe. 
Thus, every act of an individual which is believed 
to be contrary to the interests of the tribe, excites 
its unvarying disapprobation and is held to be im- 
moral; while every act, on the other hand, which 
is, as a rule, beneficial to the tribe, is warmly and 
constantly approved, and is thus considered to be 
right or moral. From the mental struggle, when 
an act that would benefit self is injurious to the 
tribe, there arises conscience ; and thus the social 
instincts are the foundation of the moral sense and 
of the fundamental principles of morality.^ 

The question of the origin and nature of the 
moral sense and of conscience is far too vast and 
complex to be discussed here, and a reference to it 
has been introduced only to complete the sketch of 
Mr. Darwin's view of the continuity and gradual 
development of all human faculties from the lower 
animals up to savages, and from savage up to 
civilized man. The point to which I wish specially 
to call attention is, that to prove continuity and 
the progressive development of the intellectual and 

^ Descent of Man, chap. iv. [Author's note.] 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 165 

moral faculties from animals to man, is not the 
same as proving that these faculties have been de- 
veloped by natural selection ; and this last is what 
Mr. Darwin has hardly attempted, although to 
support his theory it was absolutely essential to 
prove it. Because man's physical structure has 
been developed from an animal form by natural 
selection, it does not necessarily follow that his 
mental nature, even though developed pari passu 
with it, has been developed by the same causes 
only. 

To illustrate by a physical analogy. Upheaval 
and depression of land, combined with sub-aerial 
denudation by wind and frost, rain and rivers, and 
marine denudation on coast lines, were long 
thought to account for all the modelling of the 
earth's surface not directly due to volcanic action ; 
and in the early editions of Lyell's Principles of 
Geology these are the sole causes appealed to. But 
when the action of glaciers was studied and the re- 
cent occurrence of a glacial epoch demonstrated 
as a fact, many phenomena — ^such as moraines and 
other gravel deposits, boulder clay, erratic boul- 
ders, grooved and rounded rocks, and Alpine lake 
basins — were seen to be due to this altogether dis- 
tinct cause. There was no breach of continuity, no 
sudden catastrophe ; the cold period came on and 
passed away in the most gradual manner, and its 
effects often passed insensibly into those produced 



166 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

by denudation or upheaval ; yet none the less a new 
agency appeared at a definite time, and new effects 
were produced which, though continuous with pre- 
ceding effects, were not due to the same causes. 
It is not, therefore, to be assumed, without proof 
or against independent evidence, that the later 
stages of an apparently continuous development 
are necessarily due to the same causes only as the 
earlier stages. Applying this argument to the 
case of man's intellectual and moral nature, I pro- 
pose to show that certain definite portions of it 
could not have been developed by variation and 
natural selection alone, and that, therefore, some 
other influence, law, or agency is required to ac- 
count for them. If this can be clearly shown for 
any one or more of the special faculties of intel- 
lectual man, we shall be justified in assuming 
that the same unknown cause or power may have 
had a much wider influence, and may have pro- 
foundly influenced the whole course of his develop- 
ment. 

We have ample evidence that, in all the lower 
races of man, what may be termed the mathe- 
matical faculty is either absent, or, if present, 
quite unexercised. The Bushmen and the Brazil- 
ian Wood-Indians are said not to count beyond 
two. Many Australian tribes only have words for 
one and two, which are combined to make three, 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 167 

four, five, or six, beyond which they do not count. 
The Damaras of South Africa only count to three ; 
and Mr. Galton gives a curious description of how 
one of them was hopelessly puzzled when he had 
sold two sheep for two sticks of tobacco each, and 
received four sticks in payment. He could only 
find out that he was correctly paid by taking two 
sticks and then giving one sheep, then receiving 
two sticks more and giving the other sheep. Even 
the comparatively intellectual Zulus can only 
count up to ten by using the hands and fingers. 
The Ahts of Northwest America count in nearly 
the same manner, and most of the tribes of South 
America are no further advanced.^ The Kaffirs 
have great herds of cattle, and if one is lost they 
miss it immediately, but this is not by counting, 
but by noticing the absence of one they know; 
just as in a large family or a school a boy is missed 
without going through the process of counting. 
Somewhat higher races, as the Esquimaux, can 
count up to twenty by using the hands and the 
feet ; and other races get even further than this by 
saying " one man " for twenty, " two men " for 
forty, and so on, equivalent to our rural mode of 
reckoning by scores. From the fact that so many 
of the existing savage races can only count to four 
or five, Sir John Lubbock thinks it improbable that 

^ Lubbock's Origin of Civilization, fourth edition, pp. 434- 
440; Tylor's Primitive Culture, chap. vii. [Author's note.] 



168 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

our earliest ancestors could have counted as high 
as ten/ 

When we turn to the more civilized races, we 
find the use of numbers and the art of counting 
greatly extended. Even the Tongas of the South 
Sea islands are said to have been able to count as 
high as 100,000. But mere counting does not 
imply either the possession or the use of anything 
that can be really called the mathematical faculty, 
the exercise of which in any broad sense has only 
been possible since the introduction of the decimal 
notation. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyp- 
tians, the Jews, and the Chinese had all such cum- 
brous systems that anything like a science of 
arithmetic, beyond very simple operations, was 
impossible; and the Roman system, by which the 
year 1888 would be written MDCCCLXXXVIII, 
was that in common use in Europe down to the 
fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, and even much 
later in some places. Algebra, which was invented 

1 It has been recently stated that some of these facts 
are erroneous, and that some Australians can keep accurate 
reckoning up to 100, or more, when required. But this 
does not alter the general fact that many low races, includ- 
ing the Australians, have no words for high numbers and 
never require to use them. If they are now, with a little 
practice, able to count much higher, this indicates the 
possession of a faculty which could not have been developed 
under the law of utility only, since the absence of words 
for such high numbers shows that they were neither used 
nor required. [Author's note.] 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 169 

by the Hindoos, from whom also came the decimal 
notation, was not introduced into Europe till the 
thirteenth century, although the Greeks had some 
acquaintance with it ; and it reached Western 
Europe from Italy only in the sixteenth century.^ 
It was, no doubt, owing to the absence of a sound 
system of numeration that the mathematical talent 
of the Greeks was directed chiefly to geometry, in 
which science Euclid, Archimedes, and others made 
such brilliant discoveries. It is, however, during 
the last three centuries only that the civilized 
world appears to have become conscious of the 
possession of a marvellous faculty which, when sup- 
plied with the necessary tools in the decimal no- 
tation, the elements of algebra and geometry, and 
the power of rapidly communicating discoveries 
and ideas by the art of printing, has developed 
to an extent, the full grandeur of which can 
be appreciated only by those who have de- 
voted some time (even if unsuccessfully) to the 
study. 

The facts now set forth as to the almost total 
absence of mathematical faculty in savages and 
its wonderful development in quite recent times 
are exceedingly suggestive, and in regard to them 
we are limited to two possible theories. Either 
prehistoric and savage man did not possess this 

* Article Arithmetic in Encf. Cyc. of Arts and Sciences. 
[Author's note.] 



170 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

faculty at all (or only in its merest rudiments), 
or they did possess it, but had neither the means 
nor the incitements for its exercise. In the former 
case we have to ask by what means has this faculty 
been so rapidly developed in all civilized races, 
many of which a few centuries back were, in this 
respect, almost savages themselves; while in the 
latter case the difficulty is still greater, for we 
have to assume the existence of a faculty which 
had never been used either by the supposed pos- 
sessors of it or by their ancestors. 

Let us take, then, the least difficult supposition 
— that savages possessed only the mere rudiments 
of the faculty, such as their ability to count, 
sometimes up to ten, but with an utter inability to 
perform the very simplest processes of arithmetic 
or of geometry — and inquire how this rudimentary 
faculty became rapidly developed into that of a 
Newton, a La Place, a Gauss, or a Cayley. We 
will admit that there is every possible gradation 
between these extremes, and that there has been 
perfect continuity in the development of the fac- 
ulty; but we ask. What motive power caused its 
development ? 

It must be remembered we are here dealing solely 
with the capability of the Darwinian theory to 
account for the origin of the mind, as well as it 
accounts for the origin of the body of man, and 
we must, therefore, recall the essential features of 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 171 

that theory. These are, the preservation of useful 
variations in the struggle for life ; that no crea- 
ture can be improved beyond its necessities for the 
time being; that the law acts by life and death, 
and by the survival of the fittest. We have to ask, 
therefore, what relation the successive stages of 
improvement of the mathematical faculty had to 
the life or death of its possessors ; to the struggles 
of tribe with tribe, or nation with nation ; or to 
the ultimate survival of one race and the extinc- 
tion of another. If it cannot possibly have had 
any such effects, then it cannot have been pro- 
duced by natural selection. 

It is evident that in the struggles of savage man 
with the elements and with wild beasts, or of tribe 
with tribe, this faculty can have had no influence. 
It had nothing to do with the early migrations of 
man, or with the conquest and extermination of 
weaker by more powerful peoples. The Greeks 
did not successfully resist the Persian invaders 
by any aid from their few mathematicians, but by 
military training, patriotism, and self-sacrifice. 
The barbarous conquerors of the East, Timurlane 
and Gengkhis Khan,^ did not owe their success 
to any superiority of intellect or of mathematical 
faculty in themselves or their followers. Even 
if the great conquests of the Romans were, in 

^Timurlane, or Tamerlane (1335-1405), and Gengkhis 
Khan (1162-1227) were Mongol conquerors. 



172 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

part, due to their systematic military organiza- 
tion, and to their skill in making roads and en- 
campments, which may, perhaps, be imputed to 
some exercise of the mathematical faculty, that 
did not prevent them from being conquered in 
turn by barbarians, in whom it was almost entirely 
absent. And if we take the most civilized peoples 
of the ancient world — the Hindoos, the Arabs, the 
Greeks, and the Romans, all of whom had some 
amount of mathematical talent — we find that it 
is not these, but the descendants of the barbarians 
of those days — the Celts, the Teutons, and the 
Slavs — who have proved themselves the fittest to 
survive in the great struggle of races, although 
we cannot trace their steadily growing success 
during past centuries either to the possession 
of any exceptional mathematical faculty or to its 
exercise. They have indeed proved themselves, 
to-day, to be possessed of a marvellous endowment 
of the mathematical faculty; but their success at 
home and abroad, as colonists or as conquerors, 
as individuals or as nations, can in no way be 
traced to this faculty, since they were almost the 
last who devoted themselves to its exercise. We 
conclude, then, that the present gigantic develop- 
ment of the mathematical faculty is wholly un- 
explained by the theory of natural selection, 
and must be due to some altogether distinct 
cause. 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 173 

These distinctively human faculties follow very 
closely the lines of the mathematical faculty in 
their progressive development, and serve to en- 
force the same argument. Among the lower sav- 
ages music, as we understand it, hardly exists, 
though they all delight in rude musical sounds, 
as of drums, tom-toms, or gongs ; and they also 
sing in monotonous chants. Almost exactly as 
they advance in general intellect, and in the arts 
of social life, their appreciation of music appears 
to rise in proportion; and we find among them 
rude stringed instruments and whistles, till, in 
Java, we have regular bands of skilled performers, 
probably the successors of Hindoo musicians of 
the age before the Mahometan conquest. The 
Egyptians are believed to have been the earliest 
musicians, and from them the Jews and the Greeks, 
no doubt, derived their knowledge of the art ; but 
it seems to be admitted that neither the latter nor 
the Romans knew anything of harmony or of the 
essential features of modern music. ^ Till the fif- 
teenth century little progress appears to have 
been made in the science or the practice of music ; 
but since that era it has advanced with marvellous 
rapidity, its progress being curiously parallel with 
that of mathematics, inasmuch as great musical 
geniuses appeared suddenly among different na- 

^ See " History of Music," in Eng. Cyc, Science and Arts 
Division. [Author's note.] 



174 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

tions, equal in their possession of this special fac- 
ulty to any that have since arisen. 

As with the mathematical, so with the musical 
faculty, it is impossible to trace any connection 
between its possession and survival in the strug- 
gle for existence. It seems to have arisen as a 
result of social and intellectual advancement, not 
as a cause; and there is some evidence that it is 
latent in the lower races, since under European 
training native military bands have been formed 
in many parts of the world, which have been able 
to perform creditably the best modern music. 

The artistic faculty has run a somewhat dilFer- 
ent course, though analogous to that of the fac- 
ulties already discussed. Most savages exhibit 
some rudiments of it, either in drawing or carving 
human or animal figures ; but, almost without ex- 
ception, these figures are rude and such as would 
be executed by the ordinary inartistic child. In 
fact, modern savages are, in this respect, hardly 
equal to those prehistoric men who represented 
the mammoth and the reindeer on pieces of horn 
or bone. With any advance in the arts of social 
life, we have a corresponding advance in artistic 
skill and taste, rising very high in the art of Japan 
and India, but culminating in the marvellous sculp- 
ture of the best period of Grecian history. In 
the Middle Ages art was chiefly manifested in 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 175 

ecclesiastical architecture and the illumination of 
manuscripts, but from the thirteenth to the fif- 
teenth centuries pictorial art revived in Italy and 
attained to a degree of perfection which has never 
been surpassed. This revival was followed closely 
by the schools of Germany, the Netherlands, 
Spain, France, and England, showing that the 
true artistic faculty belonged to no one nation, but 
was fairly distributed among the various Euro- 
pean races. 

These several developments of the artistic fac- 
ulty, whether manifested in sculpture, painting, 
or architecture, are evidently outgrowths of the 
human intellect which have no immediate influence 
on the survival of individuals or of tribes, or on 
the success of nations in their struggles for su- 
premacy or for existence. The glorious art of 
Greece did not prevent the nation from falling 
under the sway of the less advanced Roman ; while 
we ourselves, among whom art was the latest to 
arise, have taken the lead in the colonization of 
the world, thus proving our mixed race to be the 
fittest to survive. 

The law of Natural Selection or the survival of 
the fittest is, as its name implies, a rigid law, 
which acts by the life or death of the individuals 
submitted to its action. From its very nature it 
can act only on useful or hurtful characteristics, 



1T6 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

eliminating the latter and keeping up the former 
to a fairly general level of efficiency. Hence it 
necessarily follows that the characters developed 
by its means will be present in all the individuals 
of a species, and, though varying, will not vary 
very widely from a common standard. The 
amount of variation we found, in our third chap- 
ter, to be about one fifth or one sixth of the mean 
value — that is, if the mean value were taken at 
100, the variations would reach from 80 to 120, 
or somewhat more, if very large numbers were 
compared. In accordance with this law we find 
that all those characters in man which were cer- 
tianly essential to him during his early stages of 
development exist in all savages with some ap- 
proach to equality. In the speed of running, in 
bodily strength, in skill with weapons, in acute- 
ness of vision, or in power of following a trail, 
all are fairly proficient, and the differences of en- 
dowment do not probably exceed the limits of 
variation in animals above referred to. So, in 
animal instinct or intelligence, we find the same 
general level of development. Every wren makes 
a fairly good nest like its fellows ; every fox has 
an average amount of the sagacity of its race ; 
while all the higher birds and mammals have the 
necessary affections and instincts needful for the 
protection and bringing up of their offspring. 
But in those specially developed faculties of 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 177 

civilized man which we have been considering, the 
case is very different. They exist only in a small 
proportion of individuals, while the difference of 
capacity between these favored individuals and 
the average of mankind is enormous. Taking first 
the mathematical faculty, probably fewer than one 
in a hundred really possess it, the great bulk of 
the population having no natural ability for the 
study, or feeling the slightest interest in it.^ And 
if we attempt to measure the amount of variation 
in the faculty itself between a first-class mathema- 
tician and the ordinary run of people who find any 
kind of calculation confusing and altogether de- 
void of interest, it is probable that the former 
could not be estimated at less than a hundred 
times the latter, and perhaps a thousand times 
would more nearly measure the difference between 
them. 

The artistic faculty appears to agree pretty 
closely with the mathematical in its frequency. 
The boys and girls who, going beyond the mere con- 

^ This is the estimate furnished me by two mathematical 
masters in one of our great public schools of the proportion 
of boys who have any special taste or capacity for mathe- 
matical studies. Many more, of course, can be drilled into 
a fair knowledge of elementary mathematics, but only this 
small proportion possess the natural faculty which renders 
it possible for them ever to rank high as mathematicians, 
to take any pleasure in it, or to do any original mathe- 
matical work. [Author's note.] 



178 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

ventional designs of children, draw what they see, 
not what they know to be the shape of things ; who 
naturally sketch in perspective, because it is thus 
they see objects; who see, and represent in their 
sketches, the light and shade as well as the mere 
outlines of objects; and who can draw recogniz- 
able sketches of every one they know, are certainly 
very few compared with those who are totally in- 
capable of anything of the kind. From some in- 
quiries I have made in schools, and from my own 
observation, I believe that those who are endowed 
with this natural artistic talent do not exceed, 
even if they come up to, one per cent of the whole 
population. 

The variations in the amount of artistic faculty 
are certainly very great, even if we do not take 
the extremes. The gradations of power between 
the ordinary man or woman " who does not draw," 
and whose attempts at representing any object, 
animate or inanimate, would be laughable, and the 
average good artist who, with a few bold strokes, 
can produce a recognizable and even effective 
sketch of a landscape, a street, or an animal, are 
very numerous ; and we can hardly measure the 
difference between them at less than fifty or a 
hundred fold. 

The musical faculty is undoubtedly, in its lower 
forms, less uncommon than either of the preceding, 
but it still differs essentially from the necessary 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 179 

or useful faculties in that it is almost entirely 
wanting in one half even of civilized men. For 
every person who draws, as it were instinctively, 
there are probably five or ten who sing or play 
without having been taught and from mere innate 
love and perception of melody and harmony/ On 
the other hand, there are probably about as many 
who seem absolutely deficient in musical percep- 
tion, who take little pleasure in it, who cannot 
perceive discords or remember tunes, and who 
could not learn to sing or play with any amount 
of study. The gradations, too, are here quite as 
great as in mathematics or pictorial art, and the 
special faculty of the great musical composer must 
be reckoned many hundreds or perhaps thousands 
of times greater than that of the ordinary " un- 
musical " person above referred to. 

It appears, then, that, both on account of the 
limited number of persons gifted with the mathe- 
matical, the artistic, or the musical faculty, as 
well as from the enormous variations in its devel- 
opment, these mental powers differ widely from 
those which are essential to man, and are, for the 
most part, common to him and the lower animals ; 
and that they could not, therefore, possibly have 

^ I am informed, however, by a music master in a large 
school that only about one per cent have real or decided 
musical talent, corresponding curiously with the estimate 
of the mathematicians. [Author's note.] 



180 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

been developed in him by means of the law of nat- 
ural selection. 

We have thus shown, by two distinct lines of 
argument, that faculties are developed in civilized 
man which, both in their mode of origin, their 
function, and their variations, are altogether dis- 
tinct from those other characters and faculties 
which are essential to him, and which have been 
brought to their actual state of efficiency by the 
necessities of his existence. And besides the three 
which have been specially referred to, there are 
others which evidently belong to the same class. 
Such is the metaphysical faculty, which enables 
us to form abstract conceptions of a kind the most 
remote from all practical applications, to discuss 
the ultimate causes of things, the nature and qu-al- 
ities of matter, motion, and force, of space and 
time, of cause and effect, of will and conscience. 
Speculations on these abstract and difficult ques- 
tions are impossible to savages, who seem to have 
no mental faculty enabling them to grasp the es- 
sential ideas or conceptions ; yet whenever any 
race attains to civilization, and comprises a body 
of people who, whether as priests or philosophers, 
are relieved from the necessity of labor or of 
taking an active part in war or government, the 
metaphysical faculty appears to spring suddenly 
into existence, although, like the other faculties 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 18.1 

we have referred to, it is always confined to a very 
limited proportion of the population. 

In the same class we may place the peculiar 
faculty of wit and humor, an altogether natural 
gift whose development appears to be parallel with 
that of the other exceptional faculties. Like them, 
it is almost unknown among savages, but appears 
more or less frequently as civilization advances 
and the interests of life become more numerous 
and more complex. Like them, too, it is altogether 
removed from utility in the struggle for life, and 
appears sporadically in a very small percentage of 
the population ; the majority being, as is well 
known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make 
a pun even to save their lives. ^ 

The facts now set forth prove the existence of 
a number of mental faculties which either do not 
exist at all or exist in a very rudimentary condi- 
tion in savages, but appear almost suddenly and 
in perfect development in the higher civilized races. 
These same faculties are further characterized by 
their sporadic character, being well developed only 
in a very small proportion of the community ; and 
by the enormous amount of variation in their de- 
velopment, the higher manifestations of them being 
many times — perhaps a hundred or a thousand 
times — stronger than the lower. Each of these 

^ A long foot-note by the author is omitted. 



182 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

characteristics is totally inconsistent with any ac- 
tion of the law of natural selection in the produc- 
tion of the faculties referred to ; and the facts, 
taken in their entirety, compel us to recognize 
some origin for them wholly distinct from that 
which has served to account for the animal 
characteristics — whether bodily or mental — of 
man. 

The special faculties we have been discussing 
clearly point to the existence in man of something 
which he has not derived from his animal progeni- 
tors — something which we may best refer to as 
being of a spiritual essence or nature, capable of 
progressive development under favorable condi- 
tions. On the hypothesis of this spiritual nature, 
superadded to the animal nature of man, we are 
able to understand much that is otherwise mys- 
terious or unintelligible in regard to him, espe- 
cially the enormous influence of ideas, principles, 
and beliefs over his whole life and actions. Thus 
alone we can understand the constancy of the 
martyr, the unselfishness of the philanthropist, the 
devotion of the patriot, the enthusiasm of the 
artist, and the resolute and persevering search of 
the scientific worker after nature's secrets. Thus 
we may perceive that the love of truth, the delight 
in beauty, the passion for justice, and the thrill 
of exultation with which we hear of any act of 
courageous self-sacrifice, are the workings within 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 18S 

us of a higher nature which has not been developed 
by means of the struggle for material existence. 

It will, no doubt, be urged that the admitted 
continuity of man's progress from the brute does 
not admit of the introduction of new causes, and 
that we have no evidence of the sudden change of 
nature which such introduction would bring about. 
The fallacy as to new causes involving any breach 
of continuity, or any sudden or abrupt change in 
the effects, has already been shown ; but we will 
further point out that there are at least three 
stages in the development of the organic world 
when some new cause or power must necessarily 
have come into action. 

The first stage is the change from inorganic to 
organic, when the earliest vegetable cell, or the 
living protoplasm out of which it arose, first ap- 
peared. This is often imputed to a mere increase 
of complexity of chemical compounds ; but increase 
of complexity, with consequent instability, even if 
we admit that it may have produced protoplasm 
as a chemical compound, could certainly not have 
produced living protoplasm — protoplasm which 
has the power of growth and of reproduction, 
and of that continuous process of develop- 
ment which has resulted in the marvellous 
variety and complex organization of the whole 
vegetable kingdom. There is in all this some- 
thing quite beyond and apart from chemical 



184 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

changes, however complex; and it has been well 
said that the first vegetable cell was a new thing 
in the world, possessing altogether new powers — 
that of extracting and fixing carbon from the car- 
bon dioxide of the atmosphere, that of indefinite 
reproduction, and, still more marvellous, the power 
of variation and of reproducing those variations, 
till endless complications of structure and varieties 
of form have been the result. Here, then, we have 
indications of a new power at work, which we may 
term mtality, since it gives to certain forms of 
matter all those characters and properties which 
constitute Life. 

The next stage is still more marvellous, still 
more completely beyond all possibility of explana- 
tion by matter, its laws and forces. It is the in- 
troduction of sensation or consciousness, consti- 
tuting the fundamental distinction between the ani- 
mal and vegetable kingdoms. Here all idea of 
mere complication of structure producing the re- 
sult is out of the question. We feel it to be alto- 
gether preposterous to assume that at a certain 
stage of complexity of atomic constitution, and 
as a necessary result of that complexity alone, an 
ego should start into existence, a thing that feels, 
that is conscious of its own existence. Here we 
have the certainty that something new has arisen, 
a being whose nascent consciousness has gone on 
increasing in power and definiteness till it has 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 185 

culminated in the higher animals. No verbal 
explanation or attempt at explanation — such 
as the statment that life is the result of 
the molecular forces of the protoplasm, or 
that, the whole existing organic universe from 
the amoeba up to man was latent in the fire-mist 
from which the solar system was developed — can 
afford any mental satisfaction, or help us in any 
way to a solution of the mystery. 

The third stage is, as we have seen, the existence 
in man of a number of his most characteristic and 
noblest faculties, those which raise him furthest 
above the brutes and open up possibilities of 
almost indefinite advancement. These faculties 
could not possibly have been developed by means 
of the same laws which have determined the 
progressive development of the organic world 
in general, and also of man's physical organ- 
ism.^ 

These three distinct stages of progress from the 
inorganic world of matter and motion up to man, 
point clearly to an unseen universe — to a world 
of spirit, to which the world of matter is alto- 
gether subordinate. To this spiritual world we 
may refer the marvellously complex forces which 
we know as gravitation, cohesion, chemical force, 

^ For an earlier discussion of this subject, with some wider 
applications, see the author's Contributions to the Theory 
of Natural Selection, chap. x. [Author's note.] 



186 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

radiant force, and electricity, without which the 
material universe could not exist for a moment in 
its present form, and perhaps not at all, since 
without these forces, and perhaps others which 
may be termed atomic, it is doubtful whether mat- 
ter itself could have any existence. And still more 
surely can we refer to it those progressive mani- 
festations of Life in the vegetable, the animal, and 
man — which we may classify as unconscious, con- 
scious, and intellectual life, — and which probably 
depend upon different degrees of spiritual influx. 
I have already shown that this involves no neces- 
sary infraction of the law of continuity in phys- 
ical or mental evolution; whence it follows that 
any difficulty we may find in discriminating the 
inorganic from the organic, the lower vegetable 
from the lower animal organisms, or the higher 
animals from the lowest types of man, has no bear- 
ing at all upon the question. This is to be de- 
cided by showing that a change in essential nature 
(due, probably, to causes of a higher order than 
those of the material universe) took place at the 
several stages of progress which I have indicated ; 
a change which may be none the less real because 
absolutely imperceptible at its point of origin, as 
is the change that takes place in the curve in 
which a body is moving when the application of 
some new force causes the curve to be slightly 
altered. 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 187 

Those who admit my interpretation of the evi- 
dence now adduced — strictly scientific evidence in 
its appeal to facts which are clearly what ought 
not to be on the materialistic theory — will be able 
to accept the spiritual nature of man, as not in 
any way inconsistent with the theory of evolution, 
but as dependent on those fundamental laws and 
causes which furnish the very materials for evo- 
lution to work with. They will also be relieved 
from the crushing mental burden imposed upon 
those who — maintaining that we, in common with 
the rest of nature, are but products of the blind 
eternal forces of the universe, and believing also 
that the time must come when the sun will lose his 
heat and all life on earth necessarily cease — have 
to contemplate a not very distant future in which 
all this glorious earth — which for untold millions 
of years has been slowly developing forms of life 
and beauty to culminate at last in man — shall be 
as if it had never existed ; who are compelled to sup- 
pose that all the slow growths of our race strug- 
gling towards a higher life, all the agony of mar- 
tyrs, all the groans of victims, all the evil and 
misery and undeserved suffering of the ages, all 
the struggles for freedom, all the efforts towards 
justice, all the aspirations for virtue and the well- 
being of humanity, shall absolutely vanish, and 
" like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a 
wrack behind." 



188 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 

As contrasted with this hopeless and soul-dead- 
ening belief, we, who accept the existence of a 
spiritual world, can look upon the universe as a 
grand consistent whole adapted in all its parts to 
the development of spiritual beings capable of in- 
definite life and perfectibility. To us, the whole 
purpose, the only raison d'etre of the world — 
with all its complexities of physical structure, 
with its grand geological progress, the slow evolu- 
tion of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and 
the ultimate appearance of man — was the develop- 
ment of the human spirit in association with the 
human body. From the fact that the spirit of 
man — the man himself — is so developed, we may 
well believe that this is the only, or at least the 
best way for its development; and we may even 
see in what is usually termed " evil " on the earth, 
one of the most efficient means of its growth. For 
we know that the noblest faculties of man are 
strengthened and perfected by struggle and effort ; 
it is by unceasing warfare against physical evils 
and in the midst of difficulty and danger that 
energy, courage, self-reliance, and industry have 
become the common qualities of the northern 
races ; it is by the battle with moral evil in all its 
hydraheaded forms, that the still nobler qualities 
of justice and mercy and humanity and self-sacri- 
fice have been steadily increasing in the world. 
Beings thus trained and strengthened by their 



DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 189 

surroundings, and possessing latent faculties 
capable of such noble development, are surely des- 
tined for a higher and more permanent existence; 
and we may confidently believe with our greatest 
living poet — 

That life is not as idle ore. 

But iron dug from central gloom. 
And heated hot with burning fears. 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears. 

And batter'd with the shocks of doom 

To shape and use.^ 

We thus find that the Darwinian theory, even 
when carried out to its extreme logical conclusion, 
not only does not oppose, but lends a decided sup- 
port to, a belief in the spiritual nature of man. 
It shows us how man's body may have been devel- 
oped from that of a lower animal form under the 
law of natural selection ; but it also teaches us that 
we possess intellectual and moral faculties which 
could not have been so developed, but must have 
had another origin; and for this origin we can 
only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe 
of Spirit. 

^ Tennyson's In Memoriam. 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY^ 

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

The word Positivism, as used by us to-day, I 
understand to carry with it no special reference 
to the peculiarities of Comte's system, to his views 
on the historic evolution of thought, to his classi- 
fication of the sciences, to his theories of sociology, 
or to those curious schemes of polity and ritual 
contained in his later writings, which have tried 
the fidelity of his disciples and the gravity of his 
critics. I rather suppose the word to be used in 
a wider sense. I take it to mean that general 
habit or scheme of thought which, on its negative 
side, refuses all belief in anything beyond phe- 
nomena and the laws connecting them, and on its 
positive side attempts to find in the " worship of 
humanity," or, as some more soberly phrase it, 
in the " service of man," a form of religion un- 
polluted by any element of the supernatural. 

Now I do not propose here to discuss the nega- 
tive side of this creed. Those who confidently as- 

^ An address delivered at the Church Congress, Man- 
chester, October, 1888. Reprinted, with the generous per- 
mission of the author, from Essays and Addresses, 1893. 

190 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 191 

sert, as do the Positivists, that there is one set of 
things which we can know and do know, and an- 
other set of things which we do not know and can 
never know, evidently suppose themselves to be in 
possession of some valid criterion of knowledge. 
How far this supposition is in their case legiti- 
mate, I have endeavored elsewhere to discuss from 
my own point of view, in a book the title of which 
has attracted more interest than the contents. I 
do not mean to refer to the subject here. What 
I have now to say relates solely to what may be 
called the religious element in Positivism, and its 
adequacy to meet the highest needs of beings such 
as we are, placed in a world such as ours. 

Some will deny at the outset that the term reli- 
gion can ever be appropriately used of a creed 
which has nothing in it of the supernatural. It 
is a question of words, and, like all questions of 
words, a question of convenience. In my judg- 
ment the convenience varies in this case with the 
kind of investigation in which we happen to be 
engaged. If we are considering religions from 
their dogmatic side, as systems of belief, to be 
distinguished as such both from ethics and from 
science, no doubt it would be absurd to describe 
Positivism, which allows no beliefs except such as 
are either scientific or ethical, as having any re- 
ligious element at all. So considered it is a nega- 
tion of all religion. But if, on the other hand. 



19£ ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

we are considering religion not merely from the 
outside, as a system of propositions, stating what 
can be known of man's relations to a supernatural 
power, and the rules of conduct to be framed 
thereon, but from the inside, as consisting of acts 
of belief penetrated with religious emotion, then 
I think it would be unfair to deny that some such 
emotion may centre round the object of Positivist 
cult, and that if it does so, it is inconvenient to 
refuse to describe it as a religion. 

It is doubtless unnecessary for me to dwell upon 
this double aspect of every religion, and of every 
system of belief which aspires to be a substitute 
for religion. For many purposes it may be enough 
to regard religion as a mere collection of doc- 
trines and precepts. It is often enough when we 
are dealing with its history, or its development; 
with the criticism of documents or the evidence 
of dogmas. But when we are dealing not merely 
with the evolution of religion or its truth, but 
with its function among us men here and now, we 
are at least as much concerned with the living 
emotions of the religious consciousness as with the 
framework of doctrine, on which, no doubt, they 
ultimately depend for their consistency and per- 
manence. 

Now, as it is certain that there may be super- 
naturalism without religious feeling, so we need 
not deny that there may be something of the na- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 193 

ture of religious feeling without supernaturalism. 
The Deists of the last century accepted the argu- 
ment from design. The existence of the world 
showed in their view that there must have been a 
First Cause. The character of the world showed 
that this First Cause was intelligent and benevo- 
lent. They thus provided themselves with the 
dogmatic basis of a religion, which, however in- 
adequate, nevertheless has been and still is a real 
religion to vast numbers of men. But to the 
thinkers of whom I speak this theory was never 
more than a speculative belief. The chain of 
cause and effect required a beginning, and their 
theory of a First Cause provided one. The idea 
of an infinitely complex but orderly universe ap- 
peared by itself to be unsatisfactory, if not unin- 
telligible, so they rounded it off with a God. Yet, 
while the savage who adores a stone, for no better 
reason than that it has an odd shape, possesses 
a religion, though a wretched and degraded one, 
the Deists of whom I speak had nothing more than 
a theology, though of a kind only possible in a 
comparatively advanced community. 

While there may thus be a speculative belief in 
the supernatural, which through the absence of 
religious feeling does not in the full sense of the 
word amount to a religion, there may be religious 
feeling divorced from any belief in the super- 
natural. It is indeed obvious that such feeling 



194 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

must be limited. To the variety and compass of 
the full religious consciousness it can, from the 
very nature of the case, never attain. The spec- 
tacle of the Starry Heavens may inspire admira- 
tion and awe, but cannot be said, except by way 
of metaphor, to inspire love and devotion. Hu- 
manity may inspire love and devotion, but does 
not, in ordinarily-constituted minds, inspire either 
admiration or awe. If we wish to find these and 
other religious feelings concentrated on one ob- 
ject, transfusing and vivifying the bare precepts 
of morality, the combining power must be sought 
for in the doctrines of Supernatural Religion. 

It might be said, in reply, that while some of 
the feelings associated with a supernatural the- 
ology are doubtless absent from the " religion of 
humanity," these have purpose and significance 
chiefly in relation to the doctrine of a future life, 
and to those persons, therefore, who see no ground 
for believing in the possibility of any such life, 
seem necessarily meaningless or mischievous. 
Here, then, is the point where I desire to join 
issue. The belief in a future state is one of the 
most striking — I will not say the most important 
— differences between positive and supernatural 
religion. It is one upon which no agreement or 
compromise is possible. It admits of no grada- 
tions — of no less or more. It is true, or it is false. 
And my purpose is to contribute one or two ob- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 195 

servations towards a qualitative estimate of the 
immediate gain or loss to some of the highest in- 
terests of mankind, which would follow upon a 
substitution of the Positivist for the Christian 
theory on the subject. 

I say a qualitative estimate, because it is not 
easy to argue about a quantitative estimate in 
default of a kind of experience in which we are at 
present wholly deficient. The religion of human- 
ity, divorced from any other religion, is pro- 
fessed by but a small and, in many respects, a 
peculiar sect. The cultivation of emotions at high 
tension towards humanity, deliberately dissociated 
from the cultivation of religious feeling towards 
God, has never yet been practised on a large scale. 
We have so far had only laboratory experiments. 
There has been no attempt to manufacture in bulk. 
And even if it had been otherwise, the conclusion 
to be drawn must for a long time have remained 
doubtful. For the success of such attempts 
greatly depends on the character of the social 
medium in which they are carried on ; and if, as I 
should hope, the existing social medium is favor- 
able to the growth of philanthropic feelings, its 
character is largely due to the action of Christian- 
ity. It remains to be proved whether, if Chris- 
tianity were destroyed, a " religion of humanity " 
could long maintain for itself the atmosphere in 
which alone it could permanently flourish. 



196 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

I make no attempt, then, to estimate the mag- 
nitude of the gain or loss which the destruction 
of a belief in Providence and a future life would 
entail upon mankind. I merely endeavor to char- 
acterize one or two of the elements of which that 
gain or loss would be composed. 

But in doing so I do not propose to count, or 
at least to consider, the feelings of satisfaction, 
or the reverse, with which, according to their tem- 
per or their creed, individuals may contemplate 
their personal destiny after death. My present 
business is with thoughts and emotions of a wider 
reference, and among these I count the effect 
which the belief that physical dissolution is not 
the destruction of consciousness, that death lets 
down the curtain at the end of the act, not at the 
end of the piece, has upon the mood in which we 
survey the darker aspects of the world in which 
we live. 

I. To say that the doctrine of Immortality pro- 
vides us with a ready-made solution of the prob- 
lem of evil, is of course absurd. If there be a 
problem, it is insoluble. Nevertheless there can 
be no doubt that it may profoundly modify the 
whole attitude of mind in which we are able to 
face the insistent facts of sin, suffering, and 
misery. I am no pessimist. I do not profess to 
weigh against one another the sorrows and the 
joys of humanity, and to conclude that it had 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 197 

been better for us had we never been born. Let any 
one try to perform such a calculation in his own 
case (about which he may be presumed to have 
exceptional sources of information) ; let him, in 
the same spirit of unimpassioned inquiry in which 
he would carry on any other piece of scientific 
measurement, attempt to estimate how much of 
his life has been above and how much below that 
neutral line which represents the precise degree 
of well-being at which existence is neither a blessing 
nor a curse, and he will henceforth treat with 
derision all attempts to perform the same opera- 
tion for the human race. 

But though this be so, yet the sense of misery 
unrelieved, of wrongs unredressed, of griefs be- 
yond remedy, of failure without hope, of physical 
pain so acute that it seems the one overmastering 
reality in a world of shadows, of mental depres- 
sion so deadly that it welcomes physical pain it- 
self as a relief — these, and all the crookednesses 
and injustices of a crooked and unjust world, may 
well overload our spirits and shatter the springs 
of our energies, if to this world only we must re- 
strict our gaze. For thus narrowed the problem 
is hopeless. Let us dream what dreams we please 
about the future ; let us paint it in hues of our 
own choosing; let us fashion for ourselves a world 
in which war has been abolished, disease mitigated, 
poverty rooted out; in which justice and charity 



198 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

determine every relation in life, and we shall still 
leave untouched a residue of irremediable ills — 
separation, decay, weariness, death. This dis- 
tant and doubtful millennium has its dark shadows : 
and then how distant and doubtful it is ! The 
most intrepid prophet dare hardly say with assur- 
ance whether the gorgeous mountain shapes to 
which we are drifting be cloud or solid earth. 
And while the future happiness is doubtful, the pres- 
ent misery is certain. Nothing that humanity can 
enjoy in the future will make up for what it has 
suffered in the past; for those who will enjoy are 
not the same as those who have suffered: one set 
of persons is injured, another set will receive 
compensation. 

Now I do not wish to be guilty of any exaggera- 
tion. It may freely be conceded that many per- 
sons exist to whom the knowledge that there are 
wrongs to be remedied is a stimulus to remedying 
them, and is nothing more ; who can abstract their 
minds from everything but the work in hand, and 
remain, like an experienced doctor, wholly undis- 
turbed by the sufferings of those whom they are 
endeavoring to relieve. But I am not sure that 
this class is common, or is getting commoner. 
The sensitiveness to social evils is increasing, and 
it is good that it should increase. But the good 
is not unmixed. In proportion as the general 
sympathy gets wider, as the social imagination 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 199 

gets more comprehensive and more responsive, so 
will the number of those increase who according 
to their temper either rush frantically to the first 
quack remedy that presents itself, or, too clear- 
sighted to be sanguine, but not callous enough to 
be indifferent, yield themselves bondsmen to a 
skeptical despair. For the first of these classes I 
know not that anything can be done. There is no 
cure for stupidity. But for the second, the faith 
that what we see is but part, and a small part, of 
a general scheme which will complete the destiny, 
not merely of humanity, but (which is a very 
different thing) of every man, woman, and child 
born into the world, has supplied, and may again 
supply, consolation and encouragement, energy 
and hope. 

II. It is true that we are sometimes told that 
a system by which rewards and punishments are 
annexed in another world, to the practice of virtue 
or of vice in this one, appeals to the baser side of 
human nature. And comparisons are drawn be- 
tween religions which appeal to such sanctions, and 
religions which do not, entirely to the disadvan- 
tage of the former. But this opinion, which lends 
itself naturally to much easy rhetorical treatment, 
is open to more than one objection. In the first 
place, it mistakes the position which the doctrine 
of future retribution holds in Christian theology, 
a position which, though real and important, is 



200 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

nevertheless a subordinate one in the hierarchy of 
rehgious motives. On this I do not further dwell, 
since it obviously falls beyond the limit of my 
present subject. But in the second place, it seems 
altogether to mistake the true position of ra- 
tional self-love in any sound scheme of practical 
morality. 

Conceive for one moment what an indefinitely 
better and happier world it would be if every ac- 
tion in it were directed by a reasonable desire for 
the agent's happiness ! Excess of all kinds, drunk- 
enness and its attendant ills, would vanish; disease 
would be enormously mitigated ; nine-tenths of the 
petty vexations which embitter domestic life would 
be smoothed away ; the competition for wealth 
would be lessened, for wealth would be rated at 
no more than the quantity of pleasure which it is 
capable of purchasing for its possessor; the sym- 
pathetic emotions would be sedulously cultivated, 
as among those least subject to weariness and 
satiety ; while self-sacrifice itself would be prac- 
tised as the last refinement of a judicious luxury. 

Now, love of self thus understood, we should 
be right in ranking infinitely lower among springs 
of action than the love of God or the love of man. 
But we should assuredly be utterly wrong in con- 
founding it with self-indulgence, of which it is 
usually the precise opposite, or in describing it as 
in any respect base and degraded. The world 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 201 

suffers not because it has too much of it, but be- 
cause it has too little; not because it displaces 
higher motives, but because it is itself habitually 
displaced by lower ones. But though this be so, 
yet it must sometimes happen, however rarely, 
that rational love of self conflicts with the disin- 
terested love of man, if results in this world alone 
be taken into account. It is only if we are per- 
mitted to assume another phase of existence in 
direct moral relation with this one, that the con- 
tradiction between these guiding principles of 
conduct can be solved certainly and universally in 
a higher harmony. 

It is true that hopes are held out to us that a 
judicious manipulation of the latent forces of 
public opinion may supply us with a very efficient 
substitute for Heaven and Hell, and may provide 
a method by which any action disagreeable to' the 
community shall be made so intolerable to its per- 
petrator, that a perfect accord will be produced 
between individual and public interests. Now I 
am far indeed from asserting that this scheme 
(which oddly enough meets with especial favor 
from those who find something unworthy of the 
highest morality in the ordinary doctrine of fu- 
ture retribution) is wholly chimerical. The effect 
which the opinion of his habitual associates has 
upon the ordinary man, who is neither a hero nor 
a scoundrel, is almost limitless: and though I do 



^02 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

not know that their approval has been able as yet 
to give its object a foretaste of Heaven, their dis- 
approval may, without doubt, be so organized as 
to supply its victim with a very sufficient antici- 
pation of Hell. But is this a power which any 
sober man desires to see indefinitely increased and 
placed in irresponsible hands? Is there the slight- 
est possibility that its operation would be limited 
to questions of morals? Would it not inevitably 
tresspass upon individual freedom in neutral mat- 
ters? Would it not crush out every germ of that 
" tendency to variation " which is the very basis 
of development? and can we seriously regard it as 
an improvement in the scheme of the universe that 
Infinite Justice and Infinite Mercy should be de- 
throned for the purpose of putting in their place 
an apotheosized Mrs. Grundy? 

Dismissing, then, this substitute for future ret- 
ribution as a remedy more dangerous than the 
disease, let us take stock of the position in which 
practical morality is left by the abolition of a fu- 
ture life. I have sketched for you what the world 
might be if it were governed solely by reasonable 
self-love; and a comparison between this picture 
and the reality should satisfy any one how feeble 
a motive self-love is compared with the work which 
it has to perform. In this lies the explanation of 
a fact which, strangely enough, has been used 
as an argument to show the worthlessness of Chris- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 203 

tianity as an instrument for moralizing the world. 
How comes it, say these objectors, that in the ages 
when (as they read history) the sufferings and 
joys of eternity were present with special vivid- 
ness to the mind of Christendom, more effect was 
not produced upon the lives of men ; that licen- 
tiousness and devotion so often went hand in hand ; 
that the terrors of Hell and the hopes of Heaven 
were powerless to stay the hand of violence and 
oppression? The answer is, that then, as now, 
the conviction that happiness lies along one road 
and misery along another, is seldom adequate to 
determine the path of the traveler. He will choose 
the wrong way, knowing it to be the wrong way, 
and well assured in his moments of reflection that 
he is doing not merely what he knows to be wicked, 
but what he knows to be inexpedient. Surely, 
however, this is not only conformable to the facts 
of human nature, but to the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity. If the practice of the noblest conduct is 
a fruit that can spring from the enlightened de- 
sire for happiness, then have theologians in all 
ages been notably mistaken. But it is not so. 
However closely in theory the actions prescribed 
by self-love may agree with those prescribed by 
benevolence, no man has ever succeeded in per- 
forming them from the former motive alone. No 
conviction, for instance, that unselfishness " pays " 
has ever made any man habitually and success- 



204 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

fully unselfish. To promote the happiness of 
others solely as a means to our own, may be, and 
is, a perfectly logical and reasonable policy, but 
it is not a policy which human beings are capable 
of pursuing: and, as experience shows that the love 
of self must be barren unless merged in the love 
of others, so does the Church teach that rarely can 
this love of others be found in its highest perfec- 
tion unless associated with the love of God. These 
three great principles — great, but not co-equal, 
distinct in themselves, harmonious in the actions 
they prescribe, gaining strength from a combina- 
tion often so intimate as to defy analysis — are yet, 
even in combination, insufficient to control the in- 
ordinate ambitions, desires, and passions over 
which they are de jure,^ but seldom de facto,'' the 
unquestioned rulers. How, then, are they dealt 
with by the Positivist creed ? The love of self is di- 
rectly weakened as a motive to virtue by the aboli- 
tion of supernatural sanctions in another life. The 
love of others is indirectly weakened by the possi- 
bility of conflict between it and the love of self. 
The love of God is summarily suppressed. Surely 
those who can contemplate this result with equa- 
nimity must either be very indifferent to the tri- 
umph of morality, very ignorant of human nature, 
or very sanguine about the issues of the struggle 
between the opposing forces of good and evil. 
^ By law. 2 jjj f api- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 205 

III. In considering, however, the effect of any 
creed on human actions, it is a great though a 
common error to limit our view to the bare sub- 
stance of the morahty it advocates, or to the di- 
rect method by which moral action is to be pro- 
duced. Scarcely less important is the manner in 
which it presents the results of human effort to 
the imagination of men. The question. Is life 
worth living.? when it is not a mere exclamation 
of weariness and satiety, means, or should mean, 
Is there any object worth striving for, not merely 
as a matter of duty, but for its intrinsic great- 
ness.'^ Can we look at the labors of man from any 
point of view which shall satisfy, not the con- 
science merely, but also the imagination.'^ For 
if not, if the best we can say of life is that, though 
somewhat lacking in meaning, yet where circum- 
stances are propitious, it is not otherwise than 
agreeable, then assuredly in our moments of re- 
flection it would not seem worth living; and the 
more we contemplate it as a whole, the more we 
raise ourselves above the distractions of the pass- 
ing moment, the less worth living will it seem. 

This, I apprehend, would not be denied by any 
Positivist, but he would claim for his creed 
that it had an ideal object, vast enough to 
absorb the whole energies of mankind, and 
splendid enough to satisfy its highest aspira- 
tions. In the work of building up a per- 



206 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

fected humanity, every one may bear a part. 
None indeed can do much, yet all may do some- 
thing. During his brief journey from nothingness 
to nothingness, each man may add his pebble to 
the slowly-rising foundations of an ideal world, 
content to pass into eternal darkness if he has 
hastened by a moment the advent of the golden 
age which, though he will not live to see it, yet 
must surely come. 

Though personally I prefer a system under 
which we may share the millennium to which we are 
invited to contribute, I should be the last to deny 
that conduct thus inspired has much in it that 
appeals to the highest imagination. But though 
the ideal is grand, is it also " positive " ? I have 
never been able to discover that there is any foun- 
dation in the known laws of nature for these flat- 
tering anticipations, or for any confident expecta- 
tion that if perfection be attainable we are in the 
right way to attain it. Consider for a moment 
the complexity of human affairs : our ignorance 
of the laws which govern the growth of societies ; 
the utter inadequacy of any power of calculation 
that we possess to apply with confidence our 
knowledge of those laws (such as it is) to the 
guidance of the contending forces by which the 
social organization is moved. The man who would 
sacrifice the good of the next generation for the 
greater good of the generation next but one is a 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 207 

fool. He neglects an age of which he may know 
a little, for the sake of an age respecting which he 
can know nothing. He might, if he pleased, stum- 
ble along in the twilight; he prefers to adventure 
himself in the blackness of utter night. Yet what 
is a generation in the history of man.'' Nothing. 
And we, who cannot be sure whether our efforts 
will benefit or injure our grandchildren, are quietly 
to assume that we are in the way to contribute to 
the fortunes of the remotest representatives of the 
human race. 

It will perhaps be said that if we do our best, 
all these things shall be added unto us; and that, 
without conscious contrivance on our part we shall 
be gently led towards the final consummation by 
that modern Providence, the principle of Evolu- 
tion. But I have never been fortunate enough to 
persuade myself that evolution, in so far as it is 
a scientific doctrine, promises all or any of these 
good things. I am aware that occasionally evolu- 
tionists also find themselves among the prophets; 
and I take it that some of these anticipations are 
conceived in the spirit of prophecy rather than in 
that of natural philosophy. But what guidance 
in this matter is actually given us by science ? We 
are taught that the successive developments of 
species have not been along one main channel, but 
in countless branching streams, like those that in- 
tersect the delta of some great river. We also 



208 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

know that at some point or other on the way 
towards the development of a higher intelligence 
all these streams but one have been checked. The 
progenitors of man, and they alone, would seem 
to have hit off the precise line of flow, which could 
produce an Aristotle or a Newton. But because 
man, more fortunate than his cousins, has got 
thus far, is his future progress to be indefinite.'^ 
If he differs from the animals only in degree, 
will not his fate only differ from theirs in 
degree also ? He too will reach a point, 
if he has not reached it already, beyond 
which no variation will bring with it in- 
creased intellectual grasp, increased vigor of 
imagination, increased moralization of will, in- 
creased capacity for social life. Nor does it seem 
to me that the study of history leads us to more 
encouraging results. There, too, progress has not 
been along one line of descent. Races and nations 
have in turn taken up the burden of advancing 
civilization, borne it for a certain space, found it 
too heavy for them, and have laid it wearily down. 
Many peoples have degenerated, many have be- 
come stationary, and I am wholly at a loss to 
know why we — the group of Western nations — 
and we alone, may hope to escape the common 
destiny of man. 

If we, then, regard the Universe in which we 
have to live as a mere web of connected phenomena, 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 209 

created for no object, informed by no purpose, 
stamped with no marks of design other than those 
which can be imitated by Natural Selection, I see 
no ground for the faith that all honest effort will 
work together for the production of a regenerate 
man and a perfected society. Such a conclusion 
cannot be drawn from the notion of God, for by 
hypothesis there is no God. It cannot be drawn 
from any general survey of the plan on which the 
world is framed, or of the end for which it is con- 
structed; for the world is framed on no plan, nor 
is it constructed to carry out any end. It cannot 
be drawn from a consideration of the histories of 
individual species or nations, for the inference to 
be drawn from these is that Nature has set bounds 
beyond which no alteration brings with it any sen- 
sible improvement. It cannot be deduced from 
what we know of man, for we have no knowledge 
of man more certain than that he is powerless con- 
sciously to bend towards the attainment of any 
remote ideal, forces whose interaction he is pow- 
erless to calculate or to comprehend. To me, 
therefore, it seems that the " positive " view of 
the world must needs end in a chilling skepticism 
concerning the final worth of human effort, which 
can hardly fail to freeze and paralyze the warmest 
enthusiasm and the most zealous energy. 

IV. But I do not think that its effects in starv- 
ing what I may perhaps be allowed to call the 



210 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

" moral imagination " end here. There are some 
who hold that the wider range of vision given to 
us by history and science has diminished the 
credibility of a religion which comparative the- 
ology tells us is only one among thousands that 
have flourished on a planet of which astronomy tells 
us that it is only one among indefinite millions 
scattered through limitless space. For my own 
part, the conclusion I draw from these undoubted 
facts is precisely the opposite one. Comte was, 
I think, well advised when, in his later writings, he 
discouraged research into matters remote from ob- 
vious human interest, on the ground that such re- 
search is inimical to the progress oi the Positive 
faith. Not Christianity, but Positivism, shrinks 
and pales in the light of increasing knowledge. 
For, while the Positive faith professes to base itself 
upon science, its emotions centre in humanity, and 
we are therefore treated to the singular spectacle 
of a religion in which each great advance in the 
doctrines which support it dwarfs still further 
the dignity of the object for which it exists. For 
what is man, considered merely as a natural ob- 
ject among other natural objects? Time was 
when the fortunes of his tribe were enough to ex- 
haust the energies and to bound the imagination 
of the primitive sage. The gods' peculiar care, 
the central object of an attendant universe, that 
for which the sun shone and the dew fell, to which 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 211 

the stars in their courses ministered ; it drew its 
origin in the past from divine ancestors, and might 
by divine favor be destined to an indefinite exist- 
ence of success and triumph in the future. 

These ideas represent no early stage in human 
thought, but we have left them far behind. The 
family, the tribe, the nation, are no longer enough 
to absorb our interests. Man, past, present, and 
future, lays claim to our devotion. What, then, 
can we say of him.? 

Man, so far as mental science by itself is able 
to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the uni- 
verse, the heaven-descended heir of all the ages. 
His very existence is an accident, his story a brief 
and discreditable episode in the life of one of the 
meanest of the planets. Of the combination of 
causes which first converted a piece or pieces of 
unorganized jelly into the living progenitors 
of humanity, science indeed, as yet, knows nothing. 
It is enough that from such beginnings Famine, 
Disease, and Mutual Slaughter, fit nurses of the 
future lord of creation, have gradually evolved, 
after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough 
to know that it is vile, and intelligence enough to 
know that it is insignificant. We survey the past 
and see that its history is of blood and tears, of 
helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid ac- 
quiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the 
future, and learn that after a period, long com- 



212 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

pared with the individual life, but short indeed 
compared with the divisions of time open to our 
investigation, the energies of our system will de- 
cay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the 
earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the 
race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. 
Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts 
will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in 
this obscure corner has for a brief space broken 
the contented silence of the Universe, will be at 
rest. Matter will know itself no longer. Im- 
perishable monuments and immortal deeds, death 
itself, and love stronger than death, will be as 
though they had never been. Nor will anything 
that remains be better or be worse for all that the 
labor, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have 
striven through countless generations to effect. 

Now this Positivist eschatology, like any other 
eschatology, need, of course, have little obvious or 
direct bearing on the great mass of ordinary every- 
day interests and emotions. It need not over- 
shadow every thought and action of him who ac- 
cepts it, any more than the knowledge that death 
must come some time, and may come soon, thrusts 
itself obtrusively into the business and enjoyment 
of the average man. But this does not mean that 
its influence can be disregarded. One of the ob- 
jects of the "religion of humanity," and it is an 
object beyond all praise, is to stimulate the 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 213 

imagination till it lovingly embraces the remotest 
fortunes of the whole human family. But in pro- 
portion as this end is successfully attained, in 
proportion as we are taught by this or any other 
religion to neglect the transient and the personal, 
and to count ourselves as laborers for that which 
is universal and abiding, so surely must the in- 
creasing range which science is giving to our 
vision over the times and spaces of the material 
universe, and the decreasing importance of the 
place which man is seen to occupy in it, strike 
coldly on our moral imagination, if so be that the 
material universe is all we have to do with. It is 
no answer to say that scientific discovery cannot 
alter the moral law, and that so long as the moral 
law is unchanged our conduct need be modified by 
no opinions as to the future destiny of this planet 
or its inhabitants. This contention, whether true 
or not, is irrelevant. All developed religions, and 
all philosophies which aspire to take the place of 
religion, Lucretius as well as St. Paul, give us 
some theory as to the destiny of man and his rela- 
tion to the sum of things. My contention is that 
every such religion and every such philosophy, so 
long as it insists on regarding man as merely a 
phenomenon among phenomena, a natural object 
among other natural objects, is condemned by sci- 
ence to failure as an effective stimulus to high en- 
deavor. Love, pity, and endurance it may indeed 



214 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

leave with us: and this is well. But it so dwarfs 
and impoverishes the ideal end of human effort, 
that though it may encourage us to die with dig- 
nity, it hardly permits us to live with hope. 

I have now endeavored briefly to indicate cer- 
tain salient points in which, as I think, Positivism 
must, even within the limits of mundane experi- 
ence, prove inferior as a moralizing agent to Chris- 
tianity. Of the inmost essence of Christianity, of 
the doctrines deahng with the personal relations 
between God and man, in which it differs not merely 
from Positivism, but from all other forms of re- 
ligion, I have said little. For Positivism, not 
Christianity, is my subject, and over this region 
of religious consciousness Positivism claims no 
sway. I have contented myself with inquiring 
which of these two is in truth the better " religion 
of humanity " ; which is the religion most fitted, 
in the face of advancing knowledge, to concentrate 
in the service of man those high emotions and far- 
reaching hopes from which the moral law, as a 
practical system, draws nourishment and strength. 
That such a method of treatment is essentially 
incomplete is of course obvious. It arbitrarily 
isolates, and exclusively deals with, but a small 
fraction of the question at issue between super- 
naturalism and naturalism. It leaves out of ac- 
count the greatest question of all — ^namely, the 
question of comparative proof, and directs atten- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 215 

tion only to the less august problem of compara- 
tive advantage. Such a limitation of treatment 
would in any case be imposed by the character of 
the occasion, but I am not sure that it is not in- 
trinsically useful. A philosophy of belief, I do 
not mean of religious belief, exclusively or even 
principally, but of all belief, has yet to be con- 
structed. I do not know that its foundations are 
yet laid ; nor are they likely to be laid by Positivist 
thinkers, on whose minds it does not for the most 
part seem yet to have dawned that such a philos- 
ophy is in any way required. Until some progress 
is made in this work I must adhere to an opinion 
which I have elsewhere defended, that much cur- 
rent controversy about the possibility of miracles, 
about the evidence for design, about what is com- 
monly, though very absurdly, described as the 
" conflict between science and religion," can at 
best be only provisional. But when the time 
comes at which mankind shall have attained some 
coherent method of testing the validity of those 
opinions respecting the natural and the spiritual 
worlds on which in their best moments they desire 
to act, then I hazard the guess, since to guesses 
we are at present confined, that adaptation to the 
moral wants and aspirations of humanity will not 
be regarded as wholly alien to the problems over 
which so many earnest minds are at present dis- 
quieting themselves in vain. 



216 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

But even apart from the question of relative 
proof, it may be said that the comparison between 
Christianity and Positivism has been very incom- 
pletely worked out. This is true, but let it be 
noted that the incompleteness of treatment is un- 
favorable, not to Positivism, but to Christianity. 
We have compared Positivism where it is thought 
to be strongest, with Christianity where it is 
thought to be weakest. And if the result of the 
comparison even there has been unfavorable to 
Positivism, how will the account stand if every 
element in Christianity be taken into considera- 
tion ? The " religion of humanity " seems spe- 
cially fitted to meet the tastes of that compara- 
tively small and prosperous class, who are un- 
willing to leave the dry bones of Agnosticism 
wholly unclothed with any living tissue of religious 
emotion, and who are at the same time fortunate 
enough to be able to persuade themselves that they 
are contributing, or may contribute, by their in- 
dividual efforts to the attainment of some great 
ideal for mankind. But what has it to say to the 
more obscure multitude who are absorbed, and 
wellnigh overwhelmed, in the constant struggle 
with daily needs and narrow cares ; who have but 
little leisure or inclination to consider the pre- 
cise role they are called on to play in the great 
drama of " humanity," and who might in any case 
be puzzled to discover its interest or its impor- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 217 

tance ? Can it assure them that there is no human 
being so insignificant as not to be of infinite worth 
in the eyes of Him who created the Heavens, or so 
feeble but that his action may have consequence 
of infinite moment long after this material sys- 
tem shall have crumbled into nothingness? Does 
it offer consolation to those who are in grief, hope 
to those who are bereaved, strength to the weak, 
forgiveness to the sinful, rest to those who are 
weary and heavy laden? If not, then whatever be 
its merits, it is no rival to Christianity. It can- 
not penetrate and vivify the inmost life of ordinary 
humanity. There is in it no nourishment for ordi- 
nary human souls, no comfort for ordinary human 
sorrow, no help for ordinary human weakness. 
Not less than the crudest irreligion does it leave 
us men divorced from all communion with God, 
face to face with the unthinking energies of na- 
ture which gave us birth, and into which, if super- 
natural religion be indeed a dream, we must after 
a few fruitless struggles be again resolved. 



THE PROVINCES OF THE 
SEVERAL ARTS^ 

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 



a 



Art," said Goethe, " is but form-giving." We 
might vary this definition, and say, " Art is a 
method of expression or presentation." Then 
comes the question: If art gives form, if it is a 
method of expression or presentation, to what does 
it give form, what does it express or present.'^ 
The answer certainly must be: Art gives form to 
human consciousness; expresses or presents the 
feeling or the thought of man. Whatever else art 
may do by the way, in the communication of inno- 
cent pleasures, in the adornment of life and the 
softening of manners, in the creation of beautiful 
shapes and sounds, this, at all events, is its prime 
function. 

While investing thought and sentiment, the 
spiritual subject-matter of all art, with form, or 
finding for it proper modes of presentation, each 
of the arts employs a special medium, obeying the 

^ From Essays : Speculative and Suggestive, London, 
Chapman & Hall, 1890. 

218 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 219 

laws of beauty proper to that medium. The ve- 
hicles of the arts, roughly speaking, are solid sub- 
stances (like ivory, stone, wood, metal), pigments, 
sounds, and words. The masterly handling of 
these vehicles and the realization of their charac- 
teristic types of beauty have come to be regarded 
as the craftsman's paramount concern. And in a 
certain sense this is a right conclusion ; for dex- 
terity in the manipulation of the chosen vehicle 
and power to create a beautiful object, distinguish 
the successful artist from the man who may have 
had like thoughts and feelings. This dexterity, 
this power, are the properties of the artist qua 
artist. Yet we must not forget that the form 
created by the artist for the expression of a 
thought or feeling is not the final end of art itself. 
That form, after all, is but the mode of presenta- 
tion through which tiie spiritual content manifests 
itself. Beauty, in like manner, is not the final end 
of art, but is the indispensable condition under 
which the artistic manifestation of the spiritual 
content must be made. It is the business of art to 
create an ideal world, in which perception, 
emotion, understanding, action, all elements of 
human life sublimed by thought, shall reappear in 
concrete forms as beauty. This being so, the 
logical criticism of art demands that we should 
not only estimate the technical skill of an artist 
and his faculty for presenting beauty to the 



^20 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

agsthetic sense, but that we should also ask our- 
selves what portion of the human spirit he has 
chosen to invest with form, and how he has con- 
ceived his subject. It is not necessary that the 
ideas embodied in a work of art should be the 
artist's own. They may be common to the race 
and age: as, for instance, the conception of sov- 
ereign deity expressed in the Olympian Zeus of 
Pheidias, or the conception of divine maternity 
expressed in Raphael's Madonna di San Sisto. 
Still the personality of the artist, his own intel- 
lectual and moral nature, his peculiar way of 
thinking and feeling, his individual attitude toward 
the material given to him in ideas of human con- 
sciousness, will modify his choice of subject and 
of form, and will determine his specific type of 
beauty. To take an example: supposing that an 
idea, common to his race and age, is given to the 
artist for treatment; this will be the final end of 
the work of art which he produces. But his per- 
sonal qualities and technical performance deter- 
mine the degree of success or failure to which he 
attains in seizing that idea and in presenting it 
with beauty. Signorelli fails where Perugino ex- 
cels, in giving adequate and lovely form to the 
religious sentiment. Michel Angelo is sure of the 
sublime, and Raphael of the beautiful. 

Art is thus the expression of the human spirit 
by the artist to his fellow-men. The subject- 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 221 

matter of the arts is commensurate with what man 
thinks and feels and does. It is as deep as religion, 
as wide as life. But what distinguishes art from 
religion or from life is, that this subject-matter 
must assume beautiful form, and must be presented 
directly or indirectly to the senses. Art is not the 
school or the cathedral, but the playground, the 
paradise of humanity. It does not teach, it does 
not preach. Nothing abstract enters into art's 
domain. Truth and goodness are transmuted into 
beauty there, just as in science beauty and good- 
ness assume the shape of truth, and in religion 
truth and beauty become goodness. The rigid 
definitions, the unmistakable laws of science, are not 
to be found in art. Whatever art has touched ac- 
quires a concrete sensuous embodiment, and thus 
ideas presented to the mind in art have lost a por- 
tion of their pure thought-essence. It is on this 
account that the religious conceptions of the 
Greeks were so admirably fitted for the art of 
sculpture, and certain portions of the mediaeval 
Christian mythology lent themselves so well to 
painting. For the same reason the metaphysics of 
ecclesiastical dogma defy the artist's plastic fac- 
ulty. Art, in a word, is a middle term between 
reason and the senses. Its secondary aim, after 
the prime end of manifesting the human spirit in 
beautiful form has been accomplished, is to give 
tranquil and innocent enjoyment. 



22^ JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

II 

From what has gone before, it will be seen that 
no human being can make or mould a beautiful 
form without incorporating in that form some 
portion of the human mind, however crude, how- 
ever elementary. In other words, there is no work 
of art without a theme, without a motive, without 
a subject. The presentation of that theme, that 
motive, that subject, is the final end of art. The 
art is good or bad according as the subject has 
been well or ill presented, consistently with the 
laws of beauty special to the art itself. Thus we 
obtain two standards for aesthetic criticism. We 
judge a statue, for example, both by the sculptor's 
intellectual grasp upon his subject, and also by his 
technical skill and sense of beauty. In a picture 
of the Last Judgment by Fra Angelico we say that 
the bliss of the righteous has been more success- 
fully treated than the torments of the wicked, be- 
cause the former has been better understood, al- 
though the painter's skill in each is equal. In the 
Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's spirit, 
finish of execution, and originality of design, while 
we deplore that want of sympathy with the heroic 
character which makes his type of physical beauty 
slightly vulgar and his facial expression vacuous. 

If the phrase " Art for art's sake " has any 
meaning, this meaning is simply that the artist, 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS ^23 

having chosen a theme, thinks exclusively in work- 
ing at it of technical dexterity or the quality of 
beauty. There are many inducements for the ar- 
tist thus to narrow his function, and for the critic 
to assist him by applying the canons of a soulless 
connoisseurship to his work; for the conception of 
the subject is but the starting-point in art-pro- 
duction, and the artist's difficulties and triumphs 
as a craftsman lie in the region of technicalities. 
He knows, moreover, that however deep or noble 
his idea may be, his work of art will be worthless 
if it fail in skill or be devoid of beauty. What 
converts a thought into a statue or a picture, is the 
form found for it ; and so the form itself seems all- 
important. The artist, therefore, too easily imag- 
ines that he may neglect his theme ; that a fine piece 
of coloring, a well-balanced composition, or, as 
Cellini put it, " unhel corpo ignudo,'' ^ is enough. 
And this is especially easy in an age which reflects 
much upon the arts, and pursues them with en- 
thusiasm, while its deeper thoughts and sentiments 
are not of the kind which translate themselves 
readily into artistic form. But, after all, a fine 
piece of coloring, a well-balanced composition, a 
sonorous stanza, a learned essay in counterpoint, 
are not enough. They are all excellent good 
things, yielding delight to the artistic sense and 
instruction to the student. Yet when we think of 
* A beautiful unadorned body. 



2M JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

the really great statues, pictures, poems, music of 
the world, we find that these are really great be- 
cause of something more — and that more is their 
theme, their presentation of a noble portion of 
the human soul. Artists and art-students may be 
satisfied with perfect specimens of a craftsman's 
skill, independent of his theme; but the mass of 
men will not be satisfied; and it is as wrong to 
suppose that art exists for artists and art-stu- 
dents, as to talk of art for art's sake. Art exists 
for humanity. Art transmutes thought and feel- 
ing into terms of beautiful form. Art is great 
and lasting in proportion as it appeals to the 
human consciousness at large, presenting to it 
portions of itself in adequate and lovely form. 

Ill 

It was necessary in the first place firmly to ap- 
prehend the truth that the final end of all art is 
the presentation of a spiritual content; it is ne- 
cessary in the next place to remove confusions by 
considering the special circumstances of the sev- 
eral arts. 

Each art has its own vehicle of expression. 
What it can present and how it can present it, 
depends upon the nature of this vehicle. Thus, 
though architecture, sculpture, painting, music, 
poetry, meet upon the common ground of spirit- 



THE PROVINCES OE THE ARTS 225 

ualized experience — though the works of art pro- 
duced by the architect, sculptor, painter, musician, 
poet, emanate from the spiritual nature of the 
race, are colored by the spiritual nature of the 
men who make them, and express what is spiritual 
in humanity under concrete forms invented for 
them by the artist — yet it is certain that all 
of these arts do not deal exactly with the same 
portions of this common material in the same way 
or with the same results. Each has its own de- 
partment. Each exhibits qualities of strength and 
weakness special to itself. To define these several 
departments, to explain the relation of these sev- 
eral vehicles of presentation to the common sub- 
ject-matter, is the next step in criticism. 

IV 

Of the fine arts, architecture alone subserves 
utility. We build for use. But the geometrical 
proportions which the architect observes contain 
the element of beauty and powerfully influence the 
soul. Into the language of arch and aisle and 
colonnade, of cupola and fa9ade and pediment, of 
spire and vault, the architect translates emotion, 
vague, perhaps, but deep, mute but unmistakable. 
When we say that a building is sublime or grace- 
ful, frivolous or stern, we mean that sublimity or 
grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in it. The 



226 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

emotions connected with these qualities are in- 
spired in us when we contemplate it, and are pre- 
sented to us by its form. Whether the architect 
deliberately aimed at the sublime or graceful — 
whether the dignified serenity of the Athenian 
genius sought to express itself in the Parthenon/ 
and the mysticism of mediaeval Christianity in the 
gloom of Chartres Cathedral — whether it was 
Renaissance paganism which gave its mundane 
pomp and glory to S. Peter's,' and the refined 
selfishness of royalty its specious splendor to the 
palace of Versailles — need not be curiously ques- 
tioned. The fact that we are impelled to raise 
these points, that architecture more almost than 
any other art connects itself indissolubly with the 
life, the character, the moral being of a nation 
and an epoch, proves that we are justified in 
bringing it beneath our general definition of the 
arts. In a great measure because it subserves 
utility, and is therefore dependent upon the ne- 
cessities of life, does architecture present to us 
through form the human spirit. Comparing the 
palace built by Giulio Romano ^ for the Dukes of 
Mantua wi1:h the contemporary castle of a German 
prince, we cannot fail at once to comprehend the 
difference of spiritual conditions, as these dis- 

^ A temple upon the Acropolis in Athens. 

= The Church of St. Peter in Rome. 

^ An Italian painter and architect (1492-1546), 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 227 

played themselves in daily life, which then sep- 
arated Italy from the Teutonic nations. But this 
is not all. Spiritual quality in the architect him- 
self finds clear expression in his work. Coldness 
combined with violence marks Brunelleschi's 
churches ; a certain suavity and well-bred taste the 
work of Bramante ; while Michel Angelo exhibits 
wayward energy in his library of S. Lorenzo/ 
and Amadeo ^ self-abandonment to fancy in his 
Lombard chapels. I have chosen examples from 
one nation and one epoch in order that the point 
I seek to make, the demonstration of a spiritual 
quality in buildings, may be fairly stated. 



Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves 
from the other fine arts by the imitation of con- 
crete existences in nature. They copy the bodies 
of men and animals, the aspects of the world 
around us, and the handiwork of mankind. Yet, 
in so far as they are rightly arts, they do not.make 
imitation an object in itself. The grapes of 
Zeuxis at which birds pecked, the painted dog at 
which a cat's hair bristles — if such grapes or such 
a dog were ever put upon canvas — are but evi- 

^ A famous library in Florence. 

^ Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, a noted Lombard sculptor 
(1447-1522). 



228 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

dences of the artist's skill, not of his faculty as 
artist. These two plastic, or, as I prefer to call 
them, figurative arts, use their imitation of the 
external world for the expression, the presentation 
of internal, spiritual things. The human form is 
for them the outward symbol of the inner human 
spirit, and their power of presenting spirit is lim- 
ited by the means at their disposal. 

Sculpture employs stone, wood, clay, the pre- 
cious metals, to model forms, detached and inde- 
pendent, or raised upon a flat surface in relief. 
Its domain is the whole range of human character 
and consciousness, in so far as these can be indi- 
cated by fixed facial expression, by physical type, 
and by attitude. If we dwell for an instant on the 
greatest historical epoch of sculpture, we shall 
understand the domains of this art in its range 
and limitation. At a certain point of Greek de- 
velopment the Hellenic Pantheon began to be 
translated by the sculptors into statues : and when 
the genius of the Greeks expired in Rome, the cycle 
of their psychological conceptions had been ex- 
haustively presented through this medium. Dur- 
ing that long period of time, the most delicate 
gradations of human personality, divinized, ideal- 
ized, were submitted to the contemplation of the 
consciousness which gave them being, in appro- 
priate types. Strength and swiftness, massive 
force and airy lightness, contemplative repose 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 229 

and active energy, voluptuous softness and refined 
grace, intellectual sublimity and lascivious seduc- 
tiveness — the whole rhythm of qualities which can 
be typified by bodily form — were analyzed, se- 
lected, combined in various degrees, to incarnate 
the religious conceptions of Zeus, Aphrodite, Her- 
akles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, 
Nymphs of woods and waves, Tritons, the genius 
of Death, heroes and hunters, lawgivers and poets, 
presiding deities of minor functions, man's lust- 
ful appetites and sensual needs. All that men 
think, or do, or are, or wish for, or imagine in this 
world, had found exact corporeal equivalents. 
Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of 
the body upon which the habits of the animating 
soul are wont to stamp themselves, were studied 
and employed as symbolism. Uranian Aphrodite 
was distinguished from her Pandemic sister ^ by 
chastened, lust-repelling loveliness. The muscles 
of Herakles were more ponderous than the tense 
sinews of Achilles. The Hermes of the palaestra 
bore a torso of majestic depth; the Hermes who 
carried messages from heaven had limbs alert for 
movement. The brows of Zeus inspired awe; the 
breasts of Dionysus breathed delight. 

A race accustomed, as the Greeks were, to read 

^ The two names, Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite 
Pandemos, represent two distinct moral conceptions of this 
goddess. 



230 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

this symbolism, accustomed, as the Greeks were, to 
note the individuahty of naked form, had no diffi- 
culty in interpreting the language of sculpture. 
Nor is there even now much difficulty in the task. 
Our surest guide to the subject of a bas-relief or 
statue is study of the physical type considered as 
symbolical of spiritual quality. From the frag- 
ment of a torso the true critic can say whether it 
belongs to the athletic or the erotic species. A limb 
of Bacchus differs from a limb of Poseidon. The 
whole psychological conception of Aphrodite Pan- 
demos enters into every muscle, every joint, no 
less than into her physiognomy, her hair, her 
attitude. 

There is, however, a limit to the domain of 
sculpture. This art deals most successfully with 
personified generalities. It is also strong in the 
presentation of incarnate character. But when it 
attempts to tell a story, we often seek in vain its 
meaning. Battles of Amazons or Centaurs upon 
bas-reliefs, indeed, are unmistakable. The subject 
is indicated here by some external sign. The 
group Laocoon appeals at once to a reader of 
Virgil, and the divine vengeance of Leto's children 
upon Niobe is manifest in the Uffizzi^ marbles. 
But who are the several heroes of the ^ginetan ^ 

^ A famous art gallery in Florence, 

^ The ^ginetan marbles from the temple on the island 
of ^gina, off the western coast of Greece. 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 231 

pediment, and what was the subject of the Phei- 
dian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three 
graceful figures of a bas-relief which exists at 
Naples and in the Villa Albani ^ represent Orpheus, 
Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two 
sons? Was the winged and sworded genius upon 
the Ephesus column meant for a genius of Death 
or a genius of Love? 

This dimness of significance indicates the limita- 
tions of sculpture, and inclines some of those who 
feel its charm to assert that the sculptor seeks to 
convey no intellectual meaning, that he is satisfied 
with the creation of beautiful form. There is an 
element of good sense in this revolt against the 
faith which holds that art is nothing but a mode 
of spiritual presentation. Truly the artist aims 
at producing beauty, is satisfied if he conveys de- 
light. But it is impossible to escape from the cer- 
tainty that, while he is creating forms of beauty, 
he means something, feels something; and that 
something, that theme for which he finds the form, 
is part of the world's spiritual heritage. Only the 
crudest works of figurative art, capricci and ara- 
besques, have no intellectual content ; and even 
these are good in so far as they convey the play- 
fulness of fancy. 

^ A villa in Rome containing a collection of antiquities. 



232 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

VI 

Painting employs colors upon surfaces — walls, 
panels, canvas. What has been said about sculp- 
ture will apply in a great measure to this art. 
The human form, the world around us, the works 
of man's hands, are represented in painting, not for 
their own sake merely, but with the view of bring- 
ing thought, feeling, action, home to the conscious- 
ness of the spectator from the artist's conscious- 
ness on which they have been impressed. Painting 
can tell a story better than sculpture, can repre- 
sent more complicated feelings, can suggest 
thoughts of a subtler intricacy. Through color, 
it can play, like music, directly on powerful but 
vague emotion. It is deficient in the fulness and 
roundness of concrete reality. A statue stands 
before us, the soul incarnate in palpable form, 
fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a re- 
flection cast upon a magic glass ; not less perma- 
nent, but reduced to a shadow of palpable reality. 
To follow these distinctions farther would be 
alien from the present purpose. It is enough to 
repeat that, within their several spheres, accord- 
ing to their several strengths and weaknesses, both 
sculpture and painting present the spirit to us 
only as the spirit shows itself immersed in things 
of sense. The light of a lamp enclosed within an 
alabaster vase is still lamplight, though shorn of 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 23S 

lustre and toned to colored softness. Even thus 
the spirit, immersed in things of sense presented 
to us by the figurative arts, is still spirit, though 
diminished in its intellectual clearness and in- 
vested with hues not its own. To fashion that 
alabaster form of art with utmost skill, to make 
it beautiful, to render it transparent, is the artist's 
function. But he will have failed of the highest 
if the light within burns dim, or if he gives the 
world a lamp in which no spiritual flame is lighted. 

VII 

Music transports us to a different region. Like 
architecture, it imitates nothing. It uses pure 
sound, and sound of the most wholly artificial 
kind — so artificial that the musical sounds of one 
race are unmusical, and therefore unintelligible, to 
another. Like architecture, music relies upon 
mathematical proportions. Unlike architecture, 
music serves no utility. It is the purest art of 
pleasure — the truest paradise and playground of 
the spirit. It has less power than painting, even 
less power than sculpture, to tell a story or to 
communicate an idea. For we must remember 
that when music is married to words, the words, 
and not the music, reach our thinking faculty. 
And yet, in spite of all this, music presents man's 
spirit to itself through form. The domain of the 



234< JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

spirit over which music reigns, is emotion — ^not 
defined emotion, not feeling even so generally de- 
fined as jealousy or anger — but those broad bases 
of man's being out of which emotions spring, de- 
fining themselves through action into this or that 
set type of feeling. Architecture, we have noticed, 
is so connected with specific modes of human ex- 
istence, that from its main examples we can re- 
construct the life of men who used it. Sculpture 
and painting, by limiting their presentation to the 
imitation of external things, have all the help 
which experience and association render. The 
mere artificiality of music's vehicle separates it 
from life and makes its message untranslatable. 
Nevertheless, this very disability under which it 
labors is the secret of its extraordinary potency. 
To expect clear definition from music — the defi- 
nition which belongs to poetry — would be absurd. 
The sphere of music is in sensuous perception ; the 
sphere of poetry is in intelligence. Music, dealing 
with pure sound, must always be vaguer in signifi- 
cance than poetry, which deals with words. Never- 
theless its effect upon the sentient subject may 
be more intense and penetrating for this very rea- 
son. We cannot fail to understand what words 
are intended to convey; we may very easily inter- 
pret in a hundred different ways the message of 
sound. But this is not because words are wider 
in their reach and more alive; rather because they 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 235 

are more limited, more stereotyped, more dead. 
They symbolize something precise and unmistak- 
able ; but this precision is itself attenuation of the 
something symbolized. The exact value of the 
counter is better understood when it is a word than 
when it is a chord, because all that a word conveys 
has already become a thought, while all that musi- 
cal sounds convey remains within the region of 
emotion which has not been intellectualized/ 
Poetry touches emotion through the thinking fac- 
ulty. If music reaches the thinking faculty at all, 
it is throuorh fibres of emotion. But emotion, 
when it has become thought, has already lost a 
portion of its force, and has taken to itself a 
something alien to its nature. Therefore the mes- 
sage of music can never rightly be translated into 
words. It is the very largeness and vividness of 
the sphere of simple feeling which makes its sym- 
bolical counterpart in sound so seeming vague. But 
in spite of this incontestable defect of seeming 
vagueness, an emotion expressed by music is 
nearer to our sentient self, if we have ears to take 
it in, than the same emotion limited by language. 
It is intenser, it is more immediate, as compensa- 
tion for being less intelligible, less unmistakable in 
meaning. It is an infinite, an indistinct, where 
each consciousness defines and sets a limitary form. 

^ " Thought," said Novalis somewhere, " is only a pale, 
desiccated emotion." [Author's note.] 



236 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

Nothing intervenes between the musical work of 
art and the fibres of the sentient being it immedi- 
ately thrills. We do not seek to say what music 
means. We feel the music. And if a man should 
pretend that the music has not passed beyond his 
ears, has communicated nothing but a musical de- 
light, he simply tells us that he has not felt music. 
The ancients on this point were wiser than some 
moderns when, without pretending to assign an 
intellectual significance to music, they held it for 
an axiom that one type of music bred one type of 
character, another type another. A change in 
the music of a state, wrote Plato, will be followed 
by changes in its constitution. It is of the utmost 
importance, said Aristotle, to provide in educa- 
tion for the use of the ennobling and the fortifying 
moods. These philosophers knew that music cre- 
ates a spiritual world, in which the spirit cannot 
live and move without contracting habits of emo- 
tion. In this vagueness of significance but inten- 
sity of feeling lies the magic of music. A melody 
occurs to the composer, which he certainly con- 
nects with no act of the reason, which he is prob- 
ably unconscious of connecting with any movement 
of his feeling, but which nevertheless is the form 
in sound of an emotional mood. When he reflects 
upon the melody secreted thus impromptu, he is 
aware, as we learn from his own lips, that this 
work has correspondence with emotion. Bee- 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 237 

thoven calls one sj^mphony Heroic, another Pas- 
toral; of the opening of another he says, "Fate 
knocks at the door." Mozart sets comic words to 
the mass-music of a friend, in order to mark his 
sense of its inaptitude for religious sentiment. All 
composers use phrases like Maestoso, Pomposo, 
Allegro, Lagrimoso, Con Fuoco,^ to express the 
general complexion of the mood their music ought 
to represent. 

VIII 

Before passing to poetry, it may be well to turn 
aside and consider two subordinate arts, which de- 
serve a place in any system of aesthetics. These 
are dancing and acting. Dancing uses the living 
human form, and presents feeling or action, the 
passions and the deeds of men, in artificially edu- 
cated movements of the body. The element of 
beauty it possesses, independently of the beauty of 
the dancer, is rhythm. Acting or the art of 
mimicry presents the same subject-matter, no 
longer under the conditions of fixed rhythm, but 
as an ideal reproduction of reality. The actor is 
what he represents, and the element of beauty in 
his art is perfection of realization. It is his duty 
as an artist to show us Orestes or Othello, not 

^Maestoso, majestic; Pomposo, pompous; "Allegro, gay, 
lively; Lagrimoso, tearful; Con Fuoco, with fire, passion- 
ately. 



238 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

perhaps exactly as Othello and Orestes were, but 
as the essence of their tragedies, ideally incorpo- 
rate in action, ought to be. The actor can do 
this in dumb show. Some of the greatest actors 
of the ancient world were mimes. But he usually 
interprets a poet's thought, and attempts to pre- 
sent an artistic conception in a secondary form 
of art, which has for its advantage his own per- 
sonality in play. 

IX 

The last of the fine arts is literature ; or, in the 
narrower sphere of which it will be well to speak 
here only, is poetry. Poetry employs words in 
fixed rhythms, which we call metres. Only a small 
portion of its effect is derived from the beauty of 
its sound. It appeals to the sense of hearing far 
less immediately than music does. It makes no 
appeal to the eyesight, and takes no help from the 
beauty of color. It produces no palpable, tangible 
object. But language being the storehouse of all 
human experience, language being the medium 
whereby spirit communicates with spirit in affairs 
of life, the vehicle which transmits to us the 
thoughts and feelings of the past, and on which we 
rely for continuing our present to the future, it 
follows that, of all the arts, poetry soars highest, 
flies widest, and is most at home in the region of 
the spirit. What poetry lacks of sensuous fulness, 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 239 

it more than balances by intellectual intensity. Its 
significance is unmistakable, because it employs the 
very material men use in their exchange of 
thoughts and correspondence of emotions. To the 
bounds of its empire there is no end. It embraces 
in its own more abstract being all the arts. By 
words it does the work in turn of architecture, 
sculpture, painting, music. It is the metaphysic 
of the fine arts. Philosophy finds place in poetry ; 
and life itself, refined to its last utterance, hangs 
trembling on this thread which joins our earth 
to heaven, this bridge between experience and the 
realms where unattainable and imperceptible will 
have no meaning. 

If we are right in defining art as the manifesta- 
tion of the human spirit to man by man in beauti- 
ful form, poetry, more incontestably than any 
other art, fulfils this definition and enables us to 
gauge its accuracy. For words are the spirit, 
manifested to itself in symbols with no sensual 
alloy. Poetry is therefore the presentation, 
through words, of life and all that life implies. 
Perception, emotion, thought, action, find in de- 
scriptive, lyrical, reflective, dramatic, and epical 
poetry their immediate apocalypse. In poetry we 
are no longer puzzled with problems as to whether 
art has or has not of necessity a spiritual content. 
There cannot be any poetry whatsoever without a 
spiritual meaning of some sort : good or bad, moral, 



240 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

immoral, or non-moral, obscure or lucid, noble or 
ignoble, slight or weighty — such distinctions do 
not signify. In poetry we are not met by ques- 
tions whether the poet intended to convey a mean- 
ing when he made it. Quite meaningless poetry 
(as some critics would fain find melody quite mean- 
ingless, or a statue meaningless, or a Venetian 
picture meaningless) is a contradiction in terms. 
In poetry, life, or a portion of life, lives again, 
resuscitated and presented to our mental faculty 
through art. The best poetry is that which re- 
produces the most of life, or its intensest moments. 
Therefore the extensive species of the drama and 
the epic, the intensive species of the lyric, have 
been ever held in highest esteem. Only a para- 
doxical critic maintains the thesis that poetry is 
excellent in so far as it assimilates the vagueness 
of music, or estimates a poet by his power of 
translating sense upon the border-land of non- 
sense into melodious words. Where poetry falls 
short in the comparison with other arts, is in the 
quality of form-giving, in the quality of sensuous 
concreteness. Poetry can only present forms to 
the mental eye and to the intellectual sense, stimu- 
late the physical senses by indirect suggestion. 
Therefore dramatic poetry, the most complicated 
kind of poetry, relies upon the actor; and lyrical 
poetry, the intensest kind of poetry, seeks the aid 
of music. But these comparative deficiences are 



THE PROVINCES OF THE ARTS 241 

overbalanced, for all the highest purposes of art, 
by the width and depth, the intelligibility and 
power, the flexibility and multitudinous associa- 
tions of language. The other arts are limited in 
what they utter. There is nothing which has en- 
tered into the life of man which poetry cannot ex- 
press. Poetry says everything in man's own 
language to the mind. The other arts appeal im- 
peratively, each in its own region, to man's senses ; 
and the mind receives art's message by the help 
of symbols from the world of sense. Poetry lacks 
this immediate appeal to sense. But the elixir 
which it offers to the mind, its quintessence ex- 
tracted from all things of sense, reacts through 
intellectual perception upon all the faculties that 
make men what they are. 

X 

I used a metaphor in one of the foregoing para- 
graphs to indicate the presence of the vital spirit, 
the essential element of thought or feeling, in the 
work of art. I said it radiated through the form, 
as lamplight through an alabaster vase. Now the 
skill of the artist is displayed in modelling that 
vase, in giving it shape, rich and rare, and fashion- 
ing its curves with subtlest workmanship. In so 
far as he is a craftsman, the artist's pains must 
be bestowed upon this precious vessel of the ani- 



242 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

mating theme. In so far as he has power over 
beauty, he must exert it in this plastic act. It is 
here that he displays dexterity; here that he cre- 
ates; here that he separates himself from other 
men who think and feel. The poet, more perhaps 
than any other artist, needs to keep this steadily 
in view ; for words being our daily vehicle of utter- 
ance, it may well chance that the alabaster vase of 
language should be hastily or trivially modelled. 
This is the true reason why " neither gods nor 
men nor the columns either suffer mediocrity in 
singers." Upon the poet it is specially incumbent 
to see that he has something rare to say and some 
rich mode of saying it. The figurative arts need 
hardly be so cautioned. They run their risk in 
quite a different direction. For sculptor and for 
painter, the danger is lest he should think that 
alabaster vase his final task. He may too easily be 
satisfied with moulding a beautiful but empty form. 



LITERATURE^ 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

Wishing to address you, Gentlemen, at the com- 
mencement of a new Session, I tried to find a sub- 
ject for discussion which might be at once suitable 
to the occasion, yet neither too large for your 
time, nor too minute or abtruse for your attention. 
I think I see one for my purpose in the very title 
of your Faculty. It is the Faculty of Philosophy 
and Letters. Now the question may arise as to 
what is meant by " Philosophy," and what is meant 
by " Letters." As to the other Faculties, the sub- 
ject-matter which they profess is intelligible, as 
soon as named, and beyond all dispute. We know 
what Science is, what Medicine, what Law, and 
what Theology; but we have not so much ease in 
determining what is meant by Philosophy and Let- 
ters. Each department of that twofold province 
needs explanation : it will be sufficient, on an occa- 
sion like this, to investigate one of them. Accord- 
ingly I shall select for remark the latter of the 

^ A lecture read in the School of Philosophy and Letters, 
Dublin, November, 1858. Reprinted from The Idea of a 
University. 

343 



M4< JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

two, and attempt to determine what we are to 
understand by Letters or Literature, in what Lit- 
erature consists, and how it stands relatively to 
Science. We speak, for instance, of ancient and 
modern literature, the literature of the day, 
sacred literature, light literature ; and our lectures 
in this place are devoted to classical literature and 
English literature. Are Letters, then, synony- 
mous with books .^ This cannot be, or they would 
include in their range Philosophy, Law, and, in 
short, the teaching of all the other Faculties. Far 
from confusing these various studies, we view the 
works of Plato or Cicero sometimes as philosophy, 
sometimes as literature; on the other hand, no 
one would ever be tempted to speak of Euclid as 
literature, or of Matthiae's Greek Grammar. Is, 
then, literature synonymous with composition.'' 
with books written with an attention to style? is 
literature fine writing? again, is it studied and 
artificial writing? 

There are excellent persons who seem to adopt 
this last account of Literature as their own idea 
of it. They depreciate it, as if it were the result 
of a mere art or trick of words. Professedly in- 
deed, they are aiming at the Greek and Roman 
classics, but their criticisms have quite as great 
force against all literature as against any. I think 
I shall be best able to bring out what I have to say 
on the subject by examining the statements which 



LITERATURE M5 

they make in defence of their own view of it. They 
contend, then, 1. that fine writing, as exemplified 
in the Classics, is mainly a matter of conceits, 
fancies, and prettinesses, decked out in choice 
words ; 2. that this is the proof of it, that the 
classics will not bear translating; — (and this is 
why I have said that the real attack is upon lit- 
erature altogether, not the classical only ; for, to 
speak generally, all literature, modern as well as 
ancient, lies under this disadvantage. This, how- 
ever, they will not allow; for they maintain,) 3. 
that Holy Scripture presents a remarkable con- 
trast to secular writings on this very point, mz., 
in that Scripture does easily admit of translation, 
though it is the most sublime and beautiful of all 
writings. 

Now I will begin by stating these three posi- 
tions in the word of a writer ^ who is cited by the 
estimable Catholics in question as a witness, or 
rather as an advocate, in their behalf, though he is 
far from being able in his own person to challenge 
the respect which is inspired by themselves. 

" There are two sorts of eloquence," says this 
writer, " the one indeed scarce deserves the name 
of it, which consists chiefly in labored and polished 
periods, an over-curious and artificial arrange- 
ment of figures, tinselled over with a gaudy em- 

^ Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), English novelist, and 
clergyman of the Anglican Church. 



M6 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

bellishment of words, which glitter, but convey 
little or no light to the understanding. This kind 
of writing is for the most part much affected and 
admired by the people of weak judgment and 
vicious taste; but it is a piece of affectation and 
formality the sacred writers are utter strangers to. 
It is a vain and bojdsh eloquence; and, as it has 
always been esteemed below the great geniuses of 
all ages, so much more so with respect to those 
writers who were actuated by the spirit of Infinite 
Wisdom, and therefore wrote with that force and 
majesty with which never man writ. The other 
sort of eloquence is quite the reverse to this, and 
which may be said to be the true characteristic 
of the Holy Scriptures ; where the excellence does 
not arise from a labored and far-fetched elocution, 
but from a surprising mixture of simplicity and 
majesty, which is a double character, so difficult 
to be united that it is seldom to be met with in 
compositions merely human. We see nothing in 
Holy Writ of affectation and superfluous orna- 
ment. . . . Now, it is observable that the most 
excellent profane authors, whether Greek or Latin, 
lose most of their graces whenever we find them 
literally translated. Homer's famed representa- 
tion of Jupiter — his cried-up description of a 
tempest, his relation of Neptune's shaking the 
earth and opening it to its centre, his description 
of Pallas's horses, with numbers of other long-since 



LITERATURE 247 

admired passages, flag, and almost vanish away, 
in the vulgar Latin translation. 

" Let any one but take the pains to read the 
common Latin interpretations of Virgil, The- 
ocritus, or even of Pindar, and one may venture to 
affirm he will be able to trace out but few remains 
of the graces which charmed him so much in the 
original. The natural conclusion from hence is, 
that in the classical authors, the expression, the 
sweetness of the numbers, occasioned by a musical 
placing of words, constitute a great part of their 
beauties ; whereas, in the sacred writings, they con- 
sist more in the greatness of the things themselves 
than in the words and expressions. The ideas and 
conceptions are so great and lofty in their own 
nature that they necessarily appear magnificent 
in the most artless dress. Look but into the Bible, 
and we see them shine through the most simple and 
literal translations. That glorious description 
which Moses gives of the creation of the heavens 
and the earth, which Longinus . . . was so greatly 
taken with, has not lost the least whit of its intrin- 
sic worth, and though it has undergone so many 
translations, yet triumphs over all, and breaks 
forth with as much force and vehemence as in the 
original. ... In the history of Joseph, where 
Joseph makes himself known, and weeps aloud 
upon the neck of his dear brother Benjamin, that 
all the house of Pharaoh heard him, at that 



MS JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

instant none of his brethren are introduced as 
uttering aught, either to express their present joy 
or palliate their former injuries to him. On all 
sides there immediately ensues a deep and solemn 
silence ; a silence infinitely more eloquent and ex- 
pressive than anything else that could have been 
substituted in its place. Had Thucydides, He- 
rodotus, Livy, or any of the celebrated classical 
historians, been employed in writing this history, 
when they came to this point they would doubtless 
have exhausted all their fund of eloquence in fur- 
nishing Joseph's brethren with labored and studied 
harangues, which, however fine they might have 
been in themselves, would nevertheless have been 
unnatural, and altogether improper on the occa- 
sion." ^ 

This is eloquently written, but it contains, I 
consider, a mixture of truth and falsehood, which 
it will be my business to discriminate from each 
other. Far be it from me to deny the unapproach- 
able grandeur and simplicity of Holy Scripture; 
but I shall maintain that the classics are, as 
human compositions, simple and majestic and 
natural too. I grant that Scripture is concerned 
with things, but I will not grant that classical 
literature is simply concerned with words. I grant 
that human literature is often elaborate, but I 
will maintain that elaborate composition is not un- 
^ Sterne, Sermon xlii. [Author's note.] 



LITERATURE 249 

known to the writers of Scripture. I grant that 
human literature cannot easily be translated out 
of the particular language to which it belongs ; but 
it is not at all the rule that Scripture can easily 
be translated either; — and now I address myself 
to my task : — 

Here, then, in the first place, I observe. Gentle- 
men, that Literature, from the derivation of the 
word, implies writing, not speaking; this, however, 
arises from the circumstance of the copiousness, 
variety, and public circulation of the matters of 
which it consists. What is spoken cannot outrun 
the range of the speaker's voice, and perishes in 
the uttering. When words are in demand to ex- 
press a long course of thought, when they have to 
be conveyed to the ends of the earth, or perpetu- 
ated for the benefit of posterity, they must be writ- 
ten down, that is, reduced to the shape of litera- 
ture; still, properly speaking, the terms, by which 
we denote this characteristic gift of man, belong to 
its exhibition by means of the voice, not of hand- 
writing. It addresses itself, in its primary idea, 
to the ear, not to the eye. We call it the power of 
speech, we call it language, that is, the use of the 
tongue; and, even when we write, we still keep in 
mind what was its original instrument, for we use 
freely such terms in our books as " saying," 
" speaking," " telling," " talking," " calling " ; 
we use the terms " phraseology " and " diction " ; 



250 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

as if we were still addressing ourselves to the 
ear. 

Now I insist on this, because it shows that 
speech, and therefore literature, which is its per- 
manent record, is essentially a personal work. It 
is not some production or result, attained by the 
partnership of several persons, or by machinery, 
or by any natural process, but in its very idea it 
proceeds, and must proceed, from some one given 
individual. Two persons cannot be the authors of 
the sounds which strike our ear ; and, as they can- 
not be speaking one and the same speech, neither 
can they be writing one and the same lecture or 
discourse, — which must certainly belong to some 
one person or other, and is the expression of that 
one person's ideas and feelings, — ideas and feel- 
ings personal to himself, though others may have 
parallel and similar ones, — proper to himself, in 
the same sense as his voice, his air, his countenance, 
his carriage, and his action, are personal. In 
other words. Literature expresses, not objective 
truth, as it is called, but subjective; not things, 
but thoughts. 

Now this doctrine will become clearer by con- 
sidering another use of words, which does relate 
to objective truth, or to things; which relates to 
matters, not personal, not subjective to the indi- 
vidual, but which, even were there no individual 
man in the whole world to know them or to talk 



LITERATURE S51 

about them, would exist still. Such objects be- 
come the matter of Science, and words indeed are 
used to express them, but such words are rather 
symbols than language, and however many we use, 
and however we may perpetuate them by writing, 
we never could make any kind of literature out of 
them, or call them by that name. Such, for in- 
stance, would be Euclid's Elements ; they relate to 
truths universal and eternal ; they are not mere 
thoughts, but things : they exist in themselves, not 
by virtue of our understanding them, not in de- 
pendence upon our will, but in what is called the 
nature of things, or at least on conditions external 
to us. The words, then, in which they are set 
forth are not language, speech, literature, but 
rather, as I have said, symbols. And, as a proof 
of it, you will recollect that it is possible, nay 
usual, to set forth the propositions of Euclid in 
algebraical notation, which, as all would admit, 
has nothing to do with literature. What is true 
of mathematics is true also of every study, so far 
forth as it is scientific ; it makes use of words as 
the mere vehicle of things, and is thereby with- 
drawn from the province of literature. Thus 
metaphysics, ethics, law, political economy, chem- 
istry, theology, cease to be literature in the same 
degree as they are capable of a severe scientific 
treatment. And hence it is that Aristotle's works 
on the one hand, though at first sight literature, 



252 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

approach in character, at least a great number of 
them, to mere science; for even though the things 
which he treats of and exhibits may not always be 
real and true, yet he treats them as if they were, 
not as if they were the thoughts of his own mind ; 
that is, he treats them scientifically. On the other 
hand, Law or Natural History has before now 
been treated by an author with so much of coloring 
derived from his own mind as to become a sort of 
literature ; this is especially seen in the instance 
of Theology, when it takes the shape of Pulpit 
Eloquence. It is seen too in historical composi- 
tion, which becomes a mere specimen of chronol- 
ogy, or a chronicle, when divested of the philos- 
ophy, the skill, or the party and personal feelings 
of the particular writer. Science, then, has to do 
with things, literature with thoughts ; science is 
universal, literature is personal ; science uses words 
merely as symbols, but literature uses language in 
its full compass, as including phraseology, idiom, 
style, composition, rhythm, eloquence, and what- 
ever other properties are included in it. 

Let us then put aside the scientific use of words, 
when we are to speak of language and literature. 
Literature is the personal use or exercise of 
language. That this is so is further proved from 
the fact that one author uses it so differently from 
another. Language itself in its very origination 
would seem to be traceable to individuals. Their 



LITERATURE 253 

peculiarities have given it its character. We are 
often able in fact to trace particular phrases or 
idioms to individuals ; we know the history of their 
rise. Slang surely, as it is called, comes of, and 
breathes of the personal. The connection between 
the force of words in particular languages and 
the habits and sentiments of the nations speaking 
them has often been pointed out. And, while the 
many use language as they find it, the man of 
genius uses it indeed, but subjects it withal to his 
own purposes, and moulds it according to his own 
peculiarities. The throng and succession of ideas, 
thoughts, feelings, imaginations, aspirations, 
which pass within him, the abstractions, the juxta- 
positions, the comparisons, the discriminations, the 
conceptions, which are so original in him, his views 
of external things, his judgments upon life, man- 
ners, and history, the exercises of his wit, of his 
humor, of his depth, of his sagacity, all these in- 
numerable and incessant creations, the very pul- 
sation and throbbing of his intellect, does he image 
forth, to all does he give utterance, in a corre- 
sponding language, which is as multiform as this 
inward mental action itself and analogous to it, 
the faithful expression of his intense personality, 
attending on his own inward world of thought as 
its very shadow : so that we might as well say that 
one man's shadow is another's as that the style of 
a really gifted mind can belong to any but him- 



254 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

self. It follows him about as a shadow. His 
thought and feeling are personal, and so his 
language is personal. 

Thought and speech are inseparable from each 
other. Matter and expression are parts of one: 
style is a thinking out into language. This is 
what I have been laying down, and this is litera- 
ture ; not things, not the verbal symbols of things ; 
not on the other hand mere words; but thoughts 
expressed in language. Call to mind, Gentlemen, 
the meaning of the Greek word which expresses 
this special prerogative of man over the feeble in- 
telligence of the inferior animals. It is called 
Logos: what does Logos mean.^ it stands both for 
reason and for speech, and it is difficult to say 
which it means more properly. It means both at 
once: why? because really they cannot be divided, 
— ^because they are in a true sense one. When we 
can separate light and illumination, life and mo- 
tion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then 
will it be possible for thought to tread speech 
under foot, and to hope to do without it — then 
will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile 
intellect should renounce its own double, its in- 
strument of expression, and the channel of its 
speculations and emotions. 

Critics should consider this view of the subject 
before they lay down such canons of taste as the 
writer whose pages I have quoted. Such men as he 



LITERATUKE 255 

is consider fine writing to be an addition from 
without to the matter treated of, — a sort of orna- 
ment superinduced, or a luxury indulged in, by 
those who have time and inclination for such van- 
ities. They speak as if one man could do the 
thought, and another the style. We read in Per- 
sian travels of the way in which young gentlemen 
go to work in the East, when they would engage 
in correspondence with those who inspire them 
with hope or fear. They cannot write one sen- 
tence themselves ; so they betake themselves to the 
professional letter-writer. They confide to him 
the object they have in view. They have a point 
to gain from a superior, a favor to ask, an evil to 
deprecate ; they have to approach a man in power, 
or to make court to some beautiful lady. The 
professional man manufactures words for them, as 
they are wanted, as a stationer sells them paper, 
or a schoolmaster might cut their pens. Thought 
and word are, in their conception, two things, and 
thus there is a division of labor. The man of 
thought comes to the man of words ; and the man 
of words, duly instructed in the thought, dips the 
pen of desire into the ink of devotedness, and pro- 
ceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. 
Then the nightingale of affection is heard to 
warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze 
of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation. 
This is what the Easterns are said to consider fine 



256 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

writing; and it seems pretty much the idea of the 
school of critics to whom I have been referring. 

We have an instance in literary history of this 
very proceeding nearer home, in a great Univer- 
sity, in the latter years of the last century. I 
have referred to it before now in a public lecture 
elsewhere ; ^ but it is too much in point here to be 
omitted. A learned Arabic scholar had to deliver 
a set of lectures before its doctors and professors 
on an historical subject in which his reading had 
lain. A linguist is conversant with science rather 
than with literature ; but this gentleman felt that 
his lectures must not be without a style. Being 
of the opinion of the Orientals, with whose writings 
he was familiar, he determined to buy a style. He 
took the step of engaging a person, at a price, 
to turn the matter which he had got together into 
ornamental English. Observe, he did not wish for 
mere grammatical English, but for an elaborate, 
pretentious style. An artist was found in the per- 
son of a country curate, and the job was carried 
out. His lectures remain to this day, in their own 
place in the protracted series of annual Discourses 
to which they belong, distinguished amid a number 
of heavyish compositions by the rhetorical and am- 
bitious diction for which he went into the market. 
This learned divine, indeed, and the author I have 

^ " Position of Catholics in England," pp. 101, 2. [Au- 
thor's note.] 



LITERATURE 257 

quoted, differ from each other in the estimate 
they respectively form of literary composition ; 
but they agree together in this, — in considering 
such composition a trick and a trade ; they put it 
on a par with the gold plate and the flowers and 
the music of a banquet, which do not make the 
viands better, but the entertainment more pleasur- 
able; as if language were the hired servant, the 
mere mistress of the reason, and not the lawful 
wife in her own house. 

But can they really think that Homer, or Pin- 
dar, or Shakspeare, or Dryden, or Walter Scott, 
were accustomed to aim at diction for its own sake, 
instead of being inspired with their subject, and 
pouring forth beautiful words because they had 
beautiful thoughts? this is surely too great a para- 
dox to be borne. Rather, it is the fire within the 
author's breast which overflows in the torrent of 
his burning, irresistible eloquence; it is the poetry 
of his inner soul, which relieves itself in the Ode 
or the Elegy ; and his mental attitude and bear- 
ing, the beauty of his moral countenance, the force 
and keenness of his logic, are imaged in the ten- 
derness, or energy, or richness of his language. 
Nay, according to the well-known line, " facit in- 
dignatio versus "; ^ not the words alone, but even 
the rhythm, the metre, the verse, will be the con- 
temporaneous offspring of the emotion or imagina- 

^ Indignation inspires verses. 



258 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

tion which possesses him. " Poeta nascitur, non 
fit," ^ says the proverb ; and this is in numerous 
instances true of his poems, as well as of himself. 
They are born, not framed; they are a strain 
rather than a composition ; and their perfection is 
the monument, not so much of his skill as of his 
power. And this is true of prose as well as of 
verse in its degree : who will not recognize in the 
Vision of Mirza ^ a delicacy and beauty of style 
which is very difficult to describe, but which is felt 
to be in exact correspondence to the ideas of which 
it is the expression? 

And, since the thought and reasonings of an 
author have, as I have said, a personal character, 
no wonder that his style is not only the image of 
his subject, but of his mind. That pomp of 
language, that full and tuneful diction, that felici- 
tousness in the choice and exquisiteness in the 
collocation of words, which to prosaic writers 
seems artificial, is nothing else but the mere habit 
and way of a lofty intellect. Aristotle, in his 
sketch of the magnanimous man, tells us that his 
voice is deep, his motions slow, and his stature 
commanding. In like manner, the elocution of a 
great intellect is great. His language expresses 
not only his great thoughts, but his great self. Cer- 

^ A poet is born, not made. 

' An Oriental allegorical tale in Addison's Spectator^ No, 
159. 



LITERATURE 259 

tainlj he might use fewer words than he uses ; but 
he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germinates into 
a multitude of details, and prolongs the march of 
his sentences, and sweeps round to the full dia- 
pason of his harmony, as if Kvdsi yaioov,^ re- 
joicing in his own vigor and richness of resource. 
I say, a narrow critic will call it verbiage, when 
really it is a sort of fulness of heart, parallel to 
that which makes the merry boy whistle as he 
walks, or the strong man, like the smith in the 
novel, flourish his club when there is no one to 
fight with. 

Shakspeare furnishes us with frequent in- 
stances of this peculiarity, and all so beautiful, 
that it is difficult to select for quotation. For 
instance, in Macbeth: — 

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Raze out the written troubles of the brain. 
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote. 
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff. 
Which weighs upon the heart? 

Here a simple idea, by a process which belongs 
to the orator rather than to the poet, but still 
comes from the native vigor of genius, is expanded 
into a many-membered period. 

The following from Hamlet is of the same 

kind : — 

* Exulting in glory. 



260 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath. 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye. 
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, 
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief. 
That can denote me truly. 

Now if such declamation, for declamation it is, 
however noble, be allowable in a poet, whose genius 
is so far removed from pompousness or pretence, 
much more is it allowable in an orator, whose very 
province it is to put forth words to the best ad- 
vantage he can. Cicero has nothing more re- 
dundant in any part of his writings than these 
passages from Shakspeare. No lover then at 
least of Shakspeare may fairly accuse Cicero of 
gorgeousness of phraseology or diffuseness of 
style. Nor will any sound critic be tempted to do 
so. As a certain unaffected neatness and propri- 
ety and grace of diction may be required of any 
author who lays claim to be a classic, for the same 
reason that a certain attention to dress is expected 
of every gentleman, so to Cicero may be allowed 
the privilege of the " os magna sonaturum," ^ of 
which the ancient critic speaks. His copious, ma- 
jestic, musical flow of language, even if sometimes 
beyond what the subject-matter demands, is never 
out of keeping with the occasion or with the 
speaker. It is the expression of lofty sentiments 
^ The tongue that is to utter great things. 



LITERATURE ^61 

in lofty sentences, the " mens magna in corpore 
magno." ^ It is the development of the inner man. 
Cicero vividly realized the status of a Roman sen- 
ator and statesman, and the " pride of place " of 
Rome, in all the grace and grandeur which at- 
tached to her; and he imbibed, and became, what 
he admired. As the exploits of Scipio or Pompey 
are the expression of this greatness in deed, 
so the language of Cicero is the expression 
of it in word. And, as the acts of the 
Roman ruler or soldier represent to us, in a 
manner special to themselves, the characteristic 
magnanimity of the lords of the earth, so do the 
speeches or treatises of her accomplished orator 
bring it home to our imaginations as no other 
writing could do. Neither Livy, nor Tacitus, nor 
Terence, nor Seneca, nor Pliny, nor Quintilian, is 
an adequate spokesman for the Imperial City. 
They write Latin ; Cicero writes Roman. 

You will say that Cicero's language is undeni- 
ably studied, but that Shakspeare's is as unde- 
niably natural and spontaneous ; and that this is 
what is meant, when the Classics are accused of be- 
ing mere artists of words. Here we are introduced 
to a further large question, which gives me the 
opportunity of anticipating a misapprehension of 
my meaning. I observe, then, that, not only 
is that lavish richness of style, which I have no- 

* A great mind in a large body. 



262 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

ticed in Shakspeare, justifiable on the principles 
which I have been laying down, but, what is less 
easy to receive, even elaborateness in composition 
is no mark of trick or artifice in an author. Un- 
doubtedly the works of the Classics, particularly 
the Latin, are elaborate ; they have cost a great 
deal of time, care, and trouble. They have had 
many rough copies ; I grant it. I grant also that 
there are writers of name, ancient and modern, 
who really are guilty of the absurdity of making 
sentences, as the very end of their literary labor. 
Such was Isocrates ; such were some of the soph- 
ists ; they were set on words, to the neglect of 
thoughts or things ; I cannot defend them. If I 
must give an English instance of this fault, much 
as I love and revere the personal character and in- 
tellectual vigor of Dr. Johnson, I cannot deny that 
his style often outruns the sense and the occasion, 
and is wanting in that simplicity which is the at- 
tribute of genius. Still, granting all this, I cannot 
grant, notwithstanding, that genius never need 
take pains, — that genius may not improve by prac- 
tice, — that it never incurs failures, and succeeds 
the second time, — that it never finishes off at leisure 
what it has thrown off^ in the outline at a stroke. 

Take the instance of the painter or the sculp- 
tor; he has a conception in his mind which he 
wishes to represent in the medium of his art ; — the 
Madonna and Child, or Innocence, or Fortitude, 



LITERATURE ms 

or some historical character or event. Do you 
mean to say he does not study his subject? does 
he not make sketches? does he not even call them 
*' studies " ? does he not call his workroom a 
studio? is he not ever designing, rejecting, adopt- 
ing, correcting, perfecting? Are not the first at- 
tempts of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle extant, 
in the case of some of their most celebrated compo- 
sitions? Will any one say that the Apollo Belvi- 
dere ^ is not a conception patiently elaborated into 
its proper perfection? These departments of 
taste are, according to the received notions of the 
world, the very province of genius, and yet we 
call them arts; they are the " Fine Arts." Why 
may not that be true of literary composition which 
is true of painting, sculpture, architecture, and 
music? Why may not language be wrought as well 
as the clay of the modeller? why may not words 
be worked up as well as colors? why should not 
skill in diction be simply subservient and instru- 
mental to the great prototypal ideas which are the 
contemplation of a Plato or a Virgil? Our greatest 
poet tells us. 

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, 

And, as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name. 

^ A famous statue in the Vatican, Rome. 



264 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

Now, is it wonderful that that pen of his should 
sometimes be at fault for a while, — that it should 
pause, write, erase, re-write, amend, complete, be- 
fore he satisfies himself that his language has done 
justice to the conceptions which his mind's eye 
contemplated? 

In this point of view, doubtless, many or most 
writers are elaborate ; and those certainly not the 
least whose style is furthest removed from orna- 
ment, being simple and natural, or vehement, or 
severely business-like and practical. Who so 
energetic and manly as Demosthenes? Yet he is 
said to have transcribed Thucydides many times 
over in the formation of his style. Who so grace- 
fully natural as Herodotus ? yet his very dialect 
is not his own, but chosen for the sake of the per- 
fection of his narrative. Who exhibits such happy 
negligence as our own Addison? yet artistic fas- 
tidiousness was so notorious in his instance that 
the report has got abroad, truly or not, that he 
was too late in his issue of an important state- 
paper, from his habit of revision and re-compo- 
sition. Such great authors were working by a 
model which was before the eyes of their intellect, 
and they were laboring to say what they had to 
say, in such a way as would most exactly and suit- 
ably express it. It is not wonderful that other 
authors, whose style is not simple, should be in- 
stances of a similar literary diligence. Virgil 



LITERATURE ^65 

wished his JE'neid to be burned, elaborate as is its 
composition, because he felt it needed more labor 
still, in order to make it perfect. The historian 
Gibbon in the last century is another instance in 
point. You must not suppose I am going to 
recommend his style for imitation, any more than 
his principles ; but I refer to him as the example 
of a writer feeling the task which lay before him, 
feeling that he had to bring out into words for 
the comprehension of his readers a great and com- 
plicated scene, and wishing that those words 
should be adequate to his undertaking. I think 
he wrote the first chapter of his History three 
times over; it was not that he corrected or im- 
proved the first copy; but he put his first essay, 
and then his second, aside — he recast his matter, 
till he had hit the precise exhibition of it which 
he thought demanded by his subject. 

Now in all these instances, I wish you to ob- 
serve that what I have admitted about literary 
workmanship differs from the doctrine which I am 
opposing in this, — that the mere dealer in words 
cares little or nothing for the subject which he is 
embelhshing, but can paint and gild anything 
whatever to order; whereas the artist, whom I am 
acknowledging, has his great or rich visions be- 
fore him, and his only aim is to bring out what he 
thinks or what he feels in a way adequate to the 
thing spoken of, and appropriate to the speaker. 



^66 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

The illustration which I have been borrowing 
from the Fine Arts will enable me to go a step 
further. I have been showing the connection of 
the thought with the language in literary compo- 
sition ; and in doing so I have exposed the unphilo- 
sophical notion, that the language was an extra 
which could be dispensed with, and provided to 
order according to the demand. But I have not 
yet brought out, what immediately follows from 
this, and which was the second point which I had 
to show, viz.y that to be capable of easy transla- 
tion is no test of the excellence of a composition. 
If I must say what I think, I should lay down, 
with little hesitation, that the truth was almost 
the reverse of this doctrine. Nor are many words 
required to show it. Such a doctrine, as is con^ 
tained in the passage of the author whom I quoted 
when I began, goes upon the assumption that one 
language is just like another language, — that 
every language has all the ideas, turns of thought, 
delicacies of expression, figures, associations, ab- 
stractions, points of view, which every other 
language has. Now, as far as regards Science, it 
is true that all languages are pretty much alike 
for the purposes of Science ; but even in this re- 
spect some are more suitable than others, which 
have to coin words, or to borrow them, in order to 
express scientific ideas. But if languages are not 
all equally adapted even to furnish symbols for 



LITERATURE 267 

those universal and eternal truths in which Sci- 
ence consists, how can they reasonably be ex- 
pected to be all equally rich, equally forcible, 
equally musical, equally exact, equally happy in 
expressing the idiosyncratic peculiarities of 
thought of some original and fertile mind, who 
has availed himself of one of them? A great 
author takes his native language, masters it, 
partly throws himself into it, partly moulds and 
adapts it, and pours out his multitude of ideas 
through the variously ramified and delicately mi- 
nute channels of expression which he has found 
or framed: — does it follow that this his personal 
presence (as it may be called) can forthwith be 
transferred to every other language under the 
sun? Then may we reasonably maintain that Bee- 
thoven's piano music is not really beautiful, be- 
cause it cannot be played on the hurdy-gurdy. 
Were not this astonishing doctrine maintained by 
persons far superior to the writer whom I have 
selected for animadversion, I should find it diffi- 
cult to be patient under a gratuitous extravagance. 
It seems that a really great author must admit of 
translation, and that we have a test of his excel- 
lence when he reads to advantage in a foreign 
language as well as in his own. Then Shakspeare 
is a genius because he can be translated into Ger- 
man, and not a genius because he cannot be trans- 
lated into French. Then the multiplication-table 



268 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

is the most gifted of all conceivable compositions, 
because it loses nothing by translation, and can 
hardly be said to belong to any one language what- 
ever. Whereas I should rather have conceived 
that, in proportion as ideas are novel and recon- 
dite, they would be difficult to put into words, and 
that the very fact of their having insinuated them- 
selves into one language would diminish the chance 
of that happy accident being repeated in another. 
In the language of savages you can hardly ex- 
press any idea or act of the intellect at all: is the 
tongue of the Hottentot or Esquimaux to be made 
the measure of the genius of Plato, Pindar, 
Tacitus, St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes.^ 

Let us recur, I say, to the illustration of the 
Fine Arts. I suppose you can express ideas in 
painting which you cannot express in sculpture ; 
and the more an artist is of a painter, the less he 
is likely to be of a sculptor. The more he commits 
his genius to the methods and conditions of his 
own art, the less he will be able to throw himself 
into the circumstances of another. Is the genius 
of Era Angelico, of Erancia, or of RafFaelle dis- 
paraged by the fact that he was able to do that in 
colors which no man that ever lived, which no 
Angel, could achieve in wood? Each of the Fine 
Arts has its own subject-matter; from the nature 
of the case you can do in one what you cannot do 
in another ; you can do in painting what you can- 



LITERATURE 269 

not do in carving; you can do in oils what you 
cannot do in fresco ; you can do in marble what 
you cannot do in ivory ; you can do in wax what 
you cannot do in bronze. Then, I repeat, apply- 
ing this to the case of languages, why should not 
genius be able to do in Greek what it cannot do in 
Latin? and why are its Greek and Latin works de- 
fective because they will not turn into English? 
That genius, of which we are speaking, did not 
make English ; it did not make all languages, pres- 
ent, past, and future ; it did not make the laws 
of any language : why is it to be judged of by that 
in which it had no part, over which it has no 
control ? 

And now we are naturally brought on to our 
third point, which is on the characteristics of 
Holy Scripture as compared with profane litera- 
ture. Hitherto we have been concerned with the 
doctrine of these writers, mz., that style is an 
extra, that it is a mere artifice, and that hence it 
cannot be translated ; now we come to their fact, 
viz., that Scripture has no such artificial style, and 
that Scripture can easily be translated. Surely 
their fact is as untenable as their doctrine. 

Scripture easy of translation ! then why have 
there been so few good translators? why is it that 
there has been such great difficulty in combining the 
two necessary qualities, fidelity to the original and 
purity in the adopted vernacular? why is it that 



270 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

the authorized versions of the Church are often 
so inferior to the original as compositions, except 
that the Church is bound above all things to see 
that the version is doctrinallj correct, and in a 
difficult problem is obliged to put up with defects 
in what is of secondary importance, provided she 
secure what is of first ? If it were so easy to trans- 
fer the beauty of the original to the copy, she 
would not have been content with her received ver- 
sion in various languages which could be named. 

And then in the next place. Scripture not elab- 
orate ! Scripture not ornamented in diction, and 
musical in cadence ! Why, consider the Epistle 
to the Hebrews — where is there in the classics any 
composition more carefully, more artificially writ- 
ten? Consider the book of Job — is it not a sacred 
drama, as artistic, as perfect, as any Greek 
tragedy of Sophocles or Euripides? Consider the 
Psalter — are there no ornaments, no rhythm, no 
studied cadences, no responsive members, in that 
divinely beautiful book? And is it not hard to 
understand? are not the Prophets hard to under- 
stand? is not St. Paul hard to understand? Who 
can say that these are popular compositions? who 
can say that they are level at first reading with 
the understandings of the multitude? 

That there are portions indeed of the inspired 
volume more simple both in style and in meaning, 
and that these are the more sacred and sublime 



LITERATURE 271 

passages, as, for instance, parts of the Gospels, 
I grant at once ; but this does not militate against 
the doctrine I have been laying down. Recollect, 
Gentlemen, my distinction when I began. I have 
said Literature is one thing, and that Science is 
another; that Literature has to do with ideas, and 
Science with realities ; that Literature is of a per- 
sonal character, that Science treats of what is 
universal and eternal. In proportion, then, as 
Scripture excludes the personal coloring of its 
writers, and rises into the region of pure and 
mere inspiration, when it ceases in any sense to 
be the writing of man, of St. Paul or St. John, of 
Moses or Isaias, then it comes to belong to Science, 
not Literature. Then it conveys the things of 
heaven, unseen verities, divine manifestations, and 
them alone — not the ideas, the feelings, the aspira- 
tions, of its human instruments, who, for all that 
they were inspired and infallible, did not cease to be 
men. St. Paul's epistles, then, I consider to be 
literature in a real and true sense, as personal, as 
rich in reflection and emotion, as Demosthenes or 
Euripides ; and, without ceasing to be revelations 
of objective truth, they are expressions of the 
subjective notwithstanding. On the other hand, 
portions of the Gospels, of the book of Genesis, 
and other passages of the Sacred Volume, are of 
the nature of Science. Such is the beginning of 
St. John's Gospel, which we read at the end of 



272 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

Mass. Such is the Creed. I mean, passages such 
as these are the mere enunciation of eternal things, 
without (so to say) the medium of any human 
mind transmitting them to us. The words used 
have the grandeur, the majesty, the calm, unim- 
passioned beauty of Science ; they are in no sense 
Literature, they are in no sense personal; and 
therefore they are easy to apprehend, and easy to 
translate. 

Did time admit I could show you parallel in- 
stances of what I am speaking of in the Classics, 
inferior to the inspired word in proportion as the 
subject-matter of the classical authors is im- 
mensely inferior to the subjects treated of in 
Scripture — but parallel, inasmuch as the classical 
author or speaker ceases for the moment to have 
to do with Literature, as speaking of things ob- 
jectively, and rises to the serene sublimity of Sci- 
ence. But I should be carried too far if I began. 

I shall, then, merely sum up what I have said, 
and come to a conclusion. Reverting, then, to my 
original question, what is the meaning of Letters, 
as contained. Gentlemen, in the designation of 
your Faculty, I have answered, that by Letters or 
Literature is meant the expression of thought in 
language, where by " thought " I mean the ideas, 
feelings, views, reasonings, and other operations 
of the human mind. And the Art of Letters is the 
method by which a speaker or writer brings out in 



LITERATURE 27S 

words, worthy of his subject, and sufficient for his 
audience or readers, the thoughts which impress 
him. Literature, then, is of a personal charac- 
ter ; it consists in the enunciations and teachings of 
those who have a right to speak as representatives 
of their kind, and in whose words their brethren 
find an interpretation of their own sentiments, a 
record of their own experience, and a suggestion 
for their own judgments. A great author, Gentle- 
men, is not one who merely has a copia verhorurriy^ 
whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn 
on at his wilf any number of splendid phrases and 
swelling sentences ; but he is one who has some- 
thing to say and knows how to say it. I do not 
claim for him, as such, any great depth of thought, 
or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or 
knowledge of human nature, or experience of 
human life, though these additional gifts he may 
have, and the more he has of them the greater he 
is ; but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, 
in a large sense, the faculty of Expression. He is 
master of the two-fold Logos, the thought and 
the word, distinct, but inseparable from each other. 
He may, if so be, elaborate his composition, or he 
may pour out his improvisations, but in either 
case he has but one aim, which he keeps steadily 
before him, and is conscientious and single-minded 
in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth what he 

* A wide vocabulary. 



274 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

has within him ; and from his very earnestness it 
comes to pass that, whatever be the splendor of 
his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has 
with him the charm of an incommunicable sim- 
plicity. Whatever be his subject, high or low, he 
treats it suitably and for its own sake. If he is 
a poet, " nil molitur inepte.^^ ^ If he is an orator, 
then too he speaks, not only " distincte " and 
" splendide,'' but also " apte.^^ '' His page is the 
lucid mirror of his mind and life — 

Quo fit, ut omnis 
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella 
Vita senis.^ 

He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; 
forcibly, because he conceives vividly ; he sees too 
clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; 
he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is 
rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, 
and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold 
of it, and therefore he is luminous. When his 
imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament; 
when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. 
He always has the right word for the right idea, 
and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is 
because few words suffice; when he is lavish of 

^ He is never inept. 

^ Distinct^, distinctly; splendidd, nobly; apU, aptly. 
' So that all the life of the old poet is disclosed as if it 
were painted on a votive tablet. 



LITERATURE 275 

them, still each word has its mark, and aids, not 
embarrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. 
He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say ; and 
his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, 
and his phrases become household words and 
idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated 
with the rich fragments of his language, as we 
see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman 
grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of 
modern palaces. 

Such pre-eminently is Shakspeare among our- 
selves ; such pre-eminently Virgil among the 
Latins; such in their degree are all those writers 
who in every nation go by the name of Classics. 
To particular nations they are necessarily at- 
tached from the circumstance of the variety of 
tongues, and the peculiarities of each ; but so far 
they have a catholic and ecumenical character, 
that what they express is common to the whole 
race of man, and they alone are able to express it. 

If then the power of speech is a gift as great 
as any that can be named, — if the origin of lan- 
guage is by many philosophers even considered to 
be nothing short of divine, — if by means of words 
the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain 
of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sym- 
pathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience re- 
corded, and wisdom perpetuated, — if by great 
authors the many are drawn up into unity, na- 



276 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

tional character is fixed, a people speaks, the past 
and the future, the East and the West are brought 
into communication with each other, — if such men 
are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the 
human family, — it will not answer to make light 
of Literature or to neglect its study; rather we 
may be sure that, in proportion as we master it 
in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we 
shall ourselves become in our own measure the 
ministers of like benefits to others, be they many 
or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distin- 
guished walks of life, — who are united to us by 
social ties, and are within the sphere of our per- 
sonal influence. 



BOOKS' 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

It is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are 
easily found; and the best are but records, and 
not the things recorded; and certainly there is 
dilettanteism enough, and books that are merely 
neutral and do nothing for us. In Plato's Gor- 
gias, Socrates says : " The shipmaster walks in 
a modest garb near the sea, after bringing his 
passengers from ^gina or from Pontus, not 
thinking he has done anything extraordinary, and 
certainly knowing that his passengers are the same, 
and in no respect better than when he took them 
on board." So it is with books, for the most part : 
they work no redemption in us. The bookseller 
might certainly know that his customers are in 
no respect better for the purchase and consump- 
tion of his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar ; 
and, after reading to weariness the lettered backs, 
we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did 
without surprise, of a surly bank-director, that 

* Originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, January, 
1858; later included in the volume Society and Solitude. 

277 



278 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

in bank-parlors they estimate all stocks of this 
kind as rubbish. 

But it is not less true that there are books 
which are of that importance in a man's private 
experience, as to verify for him the fables of Cor- 
nelius Agrippa/ of Michael Scott,^ or of the old 
Orpheus of Thrace, — books which take rank in 
our life with parents and lovers and passionate 
experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolu- 
tionary, so authoritative, — books which are the 
work and the proof of faculties so comprehensive, 
so nearly equal to the world which they paint, that, 
though one shuts them with meaner ones, he feels 
his exclusion from them to accuse his way of 
living. 

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen 
library. A company of the wisest and wittiest 
men that could be picked out of all civil countries, 
in a thousand years, have set in best order the 
results of their learning and wisdom. The men 
themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, im- 
patient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but 
the thought which they did not uncover to their 
bosom friend is here written out in transparent 
words to us, the strangers of another age. 

* German scholar, soldier, and, by common reputation, 
magician (1486-1535). 

^ Scottish mathematician and astrologer, reputed a wizard, 
to whom various wonderful exploits were attributed by 
popular belief (1175P-1232). 



BOOKS 279 

We owe to books those general benefits which 
come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, 
we often owe to them the perception of immor- 
tality. They impart sympathetic activity to the 
moral power. Go with mean people, and you 
think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the 
world is a proud place, peopled with men of posi- 
tive quality, with heroes and demigods standing 
around us, who will not let us sleep. Then they 
address the imagination: only poetry inspires 
poetry. They become the organic culture of the 
time. College education is the reading of cer- 
tain books which the common sense of all scholars 
agrees will represent the science already accumu- 
lated. If you know that, — for instance, in geom- 
etry, if you have read Euclid and Laplace, — your 
opinion has some value ; if you do not know these, 
3^ou are not entitled to give any opinion on the 
subject. Whenever any sceptic or bigot claims 
to be heard on the questions of intellect and 
morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of 
Plato, where all his pert objections have once for 
all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our 
time. Let him go and find himself answered there. 

Meantime the colleges, whilst they provide us 
with libraries, furnish no professor of books ; and, 
I think, no chair is so much wanted. In a library 
we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear 
friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in 



mo RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

these paper and leathern boxes ; and though they 
know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty 
centuries for us, — some of them, — and are eager 
to give us a sign, and unbosom themselves, it is 
the law of their limbo that they must not speak 
until spoken to ; and as the enchanter has dressed 
them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and 
jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thou- 
sand, your chance of hitting on the right one is 
to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permu- 
tation and Combination, — not a choice out of 
three caskets, but out of half a million caskets all 
alike. But it happens, in our experience, that in 
this lottery there are at least fifty or a hundred 
blanks to a prize. It seems, then, as if some char- 
itable soul, after losing a great deal of time among 
the false books, and alighting upon a few true 
ones which made him happy and wise, would do a 
right act in naming those which have been bridges 
or ships to carry him safely over dark morasses 
and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred cities, 
into palaces and temples. This would be best 
done by those great masters of books who from 
time to time appear, — the Fabricii, the Seldens, 
Magliabecchis, Scaligers, Mirandolas, Bayles, 
Johnsons, whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of 
learning. But private readers, reading purely for 
love of the book, would serve us by leaving each 
the shortest note of what he found. 



BOOKS 281 

There are books ; and it is practicable to read 
them, because they are so few. We look over 
with a sigh the monumental libraries of Paris, of 
the Vatican, and the British Museum. In 1858, 
the number of printed books in the Imperial Li- 
brary at Paris was estimated at eight hundred 
thousand volumes, with an annual increase of 
twelve thousand volumes ; so that the number of 
printed books extant to-day may easily exceed a 
million. It is easy to count the number of pages 
which a diligent man can read in a day, and the 
number of years which human life in favorable cir- 
cumstances allows to reading; and to demonstrate 
that, though he should read from dawn till dark, 
for sixty years, he must die in the first alcoves. 
But nothing can be more deceptive than this arith- 
metic, where none but a natural method is really 
pertinent. I visit occasionally the Cambridge 
Library, and I can seldom go there without renew- 
ing the conviction that the best of it all is already 
within the four walls of my study at home. The 
inspection of the catalogue brings me continually 
back to the few standard writers who are on every 
private shelf; and to these it can afford only the 
most slight and casual additions. The crowds and 
centuries of books are only commentary and eluci- 
dation, echoes and weakeners of these few great 
voices of Time. 

The best rule of reading will be a method from 



^8^ RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and 
pages. It holds each student to a pursuit of his 
native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let 
him read what is proper to him, and not waste his 
memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole 
nations have derived their culture from a single 
book, — as the Bible has been the literature as 
well as the religion of large portions of Europe, 
— as Hafiz was the eminent genius of the Persians, 
Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the Span- 
iards ; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a 
gainer, if all the secondary writers were lost, — 
say, in England, all but Shakspeare, Milton, and 
Bacon, — through the profounder study so drawn 
to those wonderful minds. With this pilot of his 
own genius, let the student read one, or let him 
read many, he will read advantageously. Dr. 
Johnson said: "Whilst you stand deliberating 
which book your son shall read first, another boy 
has read both : read anything five hours a day, and 
you will soon be learned." 

Nature is much our friend in this matter. Na- 
ture is always clarifying her water and her wine. 
No filtration can be so perfect. She does the same 
thing by books as by her gases and plants. There 
is always a selection in writers, and then a selec- 
tion from the selection. In the first place, all 
books that get fairly into the vital air of the 
world were written by the successful class, by the 



BOOKS 28S 

affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens 
of thousands feel though they cannot say. There 
has already been a scrutiny and choice from many 
hundreds of young pens, before the pamphlet or 
political chapter which you read in a fugitive 
journal comes to your eye. All these are young 
adventurers, who produce their performance to the 
wise ear of Time, who sits and weighs, and, ten 
years hence, out of a million of pages reprints 
one. Again, it is judged, it is winnowed by all the 
winds of opinion, and what terrific selection has 
not passed on it before it can be reprinted after 
twenty years, — and reprinted after a century ! — 
it is as if Minos and Rhadamanthus had indorsed 
the writing. 'Tis therefore an economy of time 
to read old and famed books. Nothing can be 
preserved which is not good ; and I know before- 
hand that Pindar, Martial, Terence, Galen, Kepler, 
Galileo, Bacon, Erasmus, More, will be superior 
to the average intellect. In contemporaries, it is 
not so easy to distinguish betwixt notoriety and 
fame. 

Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun 
the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. 
Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, 
in the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said, " he 
always went into stately shops ; " and good trav- 
ellers stop at the best hotels ; for, though they cost 
more, they do not cost much more, and there is 



284 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

the good company and the best information. In 
like manner, the scholar knows that the famed 
books contain, first and last, the best thoughts and 
facts. Now and then, by rarest luck, in some 
foolish Grub Street is the gem we want. But in 
the best circles is the best information. If you 
should transfer the amount of your reading day 
by day from the newspaper to the standard 

authors But who dare speak of such a thing.^* 

The three practical rules, then, which I have to 
offer, are — 1. Never read any book that is not a 
year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 
3. Never read any but what you like; or, in 
Shakspeare's phrase — 

No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en: 
In brief, sir, study what you most affect. 

Montaigne says, " Books are a languid pleas- 
ure ; " but I find certain books vital and spermatic, 
not leaving the reader what he was : he shuts the 
book a richer man. I would never willingly read 
any others than such. And I will venture, at the 
risk of inditing a list of old primers and grammars, 
to count the few books which a superficial reader 
must thankfully use. 

Of the old Greek books, I think there are five 
which we cannot spare: 1. Homer, who in spite of 
Pope and all the learned uproar of centuries, has 
really the true fire, and is good for simple minds, 



BOOKS 285 

is the true and adequate germ of Greece, and oc- 
cupies that place as history which nothing can sup- 
ply. It holds through all literature, that our best 
history is still poetry. It is so in Hebrew, in 
Sanskrit, and in Greek. English history is best 
known through Shakspeare; how much through 
Merlin, Robin Hood, and the Scottish ballads ! 
— the German, through the Nibelungenlied, — the 
Spanish, through the Cid. Of Homer, George 
Chapman's is the heroic translation, though the 
most literal prose version is the best of all. 2. 
Herodotus, whose history contains inestimable 
anecdotes, which brought it with the learned into 
a sort of disesteem ; but in these days, when it is 
found that what is most memorable of history is 
a few anecdotes, and that we need not be alarmed 
though we should find it not dull, it is regaining 
credit. 3. ^schylus, the grandest of the three 
tragedians, who has given us under a thin veil 
the first plantation of Europe. The Prometheus 
is a poem of the like dignity and scope as the 
Book of Job, or the Norse Edda. 4. Of Plato I 
hesitate to speak, lest there should be no end. You 
find in him that which you have already found in 
Homer, now ripened to thought, — the poet con- 
verted to a philosopher, with loftier strains of 
musical wisdom than Homer reached ; as if Homer 
were the youth, and Plato the finished man; yet 
with no less security of bold and perfect song, 



286 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

when he cares to use it, and with some harpstrings 
fetched from a higher heaven. He contains the 
future, as he came out of the past. In Plato, you 
explore modern Europe in its causes and seed, — 
all that in thought, which the history of Europe 
embodies or has yet to embody. The well-informed 
man finds himself anticipated. Plato is up with 
him too. Nothing has escaped him. Every new 
crop in the fertile harvest of reform, every fresh 
suggestion of modern humanity, is there. If the 
student wish to see both sides, and justice done tq 
the man of the world, pitiless exposure of pedants, 
and the supremacy of truth and the religious senti- 
ment, he shall be contented also. Why should not 
young men be educated on this book? It would 
suffice for the tuition of the race, — to test their 
understanding, and to express their reason. Here 
is that which is so attractive to all men, — the 
literature of aristocracy shall I call it.f^ — the pic- 
ture of the best persons, sentiments, and manners, 
by the first master, in the best times, — portraits 
of Pericles, Alcibiades, Crito, Prodicus, Pro- 
tagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, with the lovely 
background of the Athenian and suburban land- 
scape. Or who can over-estimate the images with 
which Plato has enriched the minds of men, and 
which pass like bullion in the currency of all na- 
tions.^ Read the Fhoedo, the Protagoras^ the 
Phcedrus, the Timceus, the Republic, and the Apol- 



BOOKS 287 

ogy of Socrates. 5. Plutarch cannot be spared 
from the smallest library; first, because he is so 
readable, which is much ; then, that he is medicinal 
and invigorating. The lives of Cimon, Lycurgus, 
Alexander, Demosthenes, Phocion, Marcellus, and 
the rest, are what history has of best. But this 
book has taken care of itself, and the opinion of 
the world is expressed in the innumerable cheap 
editions, which make it as accessible as a news- 
paper. But Plutarch's Morals is less known, and 
seldom reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am 
writing to can as ill spare it as the Lives. He 
will read in it the essays " On the Dsemon of Soc- 
rates," " On Isis and Osiris," " On Progress in 
Virtue," " On Garrulity," " On Love," and thank 
anew the art of printing, and the cheerful domain 
of ancient thinking. Plutarch charms by the facil- 
ity of his associations ; so that it signifies little 
w^here you open his book, you find yourself at the 
Olympian tables. His memory is like the Isthmian 
Games, where all that was excellent in Greece was 
assembled, and you are stimulated and recruited 
by lyric verses, by philosophic sentiments, by the 
forms and behavior of heroes, by the worship of 
the gods, and by the passing of fillets, parsley 
and laurel wreaths, chariots, armor, sacred cups, 
and utensils of sacrifice. An inestimable trilogy of 
ancient social pictures are the three " Banquets " 
respectively of Plato, Xenophon, and Plutarch, 



288 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Plutarch's has the least approach to historical ac- 
curacy ; but the meeting of the Seven Wise Mas- 
ters is a charming portraiture of ancient manners 
and discourse, and is as clear as the voice of a fife, 
and entertaining as a French novel. Xenophon's 
delineation of Athenian manners is an accessor}'' 
to Plato, and supplies traits of Socrates ; whilst 
Plato's has merits of every kind, — being a reper- 
tory of the wisdom of the ancients on the subject 
of love, — a picture of a feast of wits, not less de- 
scriptive than Aristophanes, — and, lastly, con- 
taining that ironical eulogy of Socrates which is 
the source from which all the portraits of that 
philosopher current in Europe have been drawn. 
Of course a certain outline should be obtained 
of Greek history, in which the important moments 
and persons can be rightly set down ; but the 
shortest is the best, and if one lacks stomach for 
Mr. Grote's voluminous annals, the old slight and 
popular summary of Goldsmith or of Gillies will 
serve. The valuable part is the age of Pericles 
and the next generation. And here we must read 
the Clouds of Aristophanes, and what more of that 
master we gain appetite for, to learn our way in 
the streets of Athens, and to know the tyranny of 
Aristophanes, requiring more genius and some- 
times not less cruelty than belonged to the official 
commanders. Aristophanes is now very accessible, 
with much valuable commentary, through the 



BOOKS 289 

labors of Mitchell and Cartwright. An excellent 
popular book is J. A. St. John's Ancient Greece; 
the Life and Letters of Niebuhr, even more than 
his Lectures, furnish leading views ; and Winckel- 
mann, a Greek born out of due time, has become 
essential to an intimate knowledge of the Attic 
genius. The secret of the recent histories in Ger- 
man and in English is the discovery, owed first to 
Wolff, and later to Boeckh, that the sincere Greek 
history of that period must be drawn from Demos- 
thenes, especially from the business orations, and 
from the comic poets. 

If we come down a little by natural steps from 
the master to the disciples, we have, six or seven 
centuries later, the Platonists, — who also cannot 
be skipped, — Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Syne- 
sius, Jamblichus. Of Jamblichus the Emperor 
Julian said, " that he was posterior to Plato in 
time, not in genius." Of Plotinus, we have eulogies 
by Porphyry and Longinus, and the favor of the 
Emperor Gallienus, — indicating the respect he in- 
spired among his contemporaries. If any one who 
had read with interest the Isis and Osiris of Plu- 
tarch should then read a chapter called '^ Provi- 
dence," by Synesius, translated into English by 
Thomas Taylor, he will find it one of the majestic 
remains of literature, and, like one walking in the 
noblest of temples, will conceive new gratitude to 
his fellow-men, and a new estimate of their nobility. 



^90 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

The imaginative scholar will find few stimulants 
to his brain like these writers. He has entered the 
Elysian fields ; and the grand and pleasing figures 
of gods and demons and demoniacal men, of the 
" azonic " and the " aquatic gods," demons with 
fulgid eyes, and all the rest of the Platonic 
rhetoric, exalted a little under the African sun, sail 
before his eyes. The acolyte has mounted the 
tripod over the cave at Delphi; his heart dances, 
his sight is quickened. These guides speak of the 
gods with such depth and with such pictorial de- 
tails, as if they had been bodily present at the 
Olympian feasts. The reader of these books 
makes new acquaintance with his own mind; new 
regions of thought are opened. Jamblichus's Life 
of Pythagoras works more directly on the will than 
the others ; since Pythagoras was eminently a prac- 
tical person, the founder of a school of ascetics 
and socialists, a planter of colonies, and nowise a 
man of abstract studies alone. 

The respectable and sometimes excellent trans- 
lations of Bohn's Library have done for literature 
what railroads have done for internal intercourse. 
I do not hesitate to read all the books I have 
named, and all good books, in translations. What 
is really best in any book is translatable, — 
any real insight or broad human sentiment. Nay, 
I observe that, in our Bible, and other books of 
lofty moral tone, it seems easy and inevitable tg 



BOOKS 291 

render the rhythm and music of the original into 
phrases of equal melody. The Italians have a 
fling at translators, — i traditori traduttori; ^ but 
I thank them. I rarely read any Latin, Greek, 
German, Italian,, sometimes not a French book in 
the original, which I can procure in a good version. 
I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan 
English speech, the sea which receives tributaries 
from every region under heaven. I should as soon 
think of swimming across Charles River when I 
wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books 
in originals, when I have them rendered for me in 
my mother-tongue. 

For history there is great choice of ways to 
bring the student through early Rome. If he 
can read Livy, he has a good book ; but one of the 
short English compends, some Goldsmith or Fergu- 
son, should be used, that will place in the cycle 
the bright stars of Plutarch. The poet Horace is 
the eye of the Augustan age; Tacitus, the wisest 
of historians ; and Martial will give him Roman 
manners — and some very bad ones — in the early 
days of the Empire: but Martial must be read, if 
read at all, in his own tongue. These will bring 
him to Gibbon, who will take him in charge, and 
convey him with abundant entertainment down — 
with notice of all remarkable objects on the way 
— through fourteen hundred years of time. He 

* " Translators [are] traitors." 



292 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

cannot spare Gibbon, with his vast reading, — 
with such wit and continuity of mind, that, 
though never profound, his book is one of the con- 
veniences of civilization, hke the new railroad from 
ocean to ocean, — and, I think, will be sure to send 
the reader to his Memoirs of Himself, and the Ex- 
tracts from my Journal, and Abstracts of my 
Readings, which will spur the laziest scholar to 
emulation of his prodigious performance. 

Now haAang our idler safe down as far as the 
fall of Constantinople in 1453, he is in very good 
courses ; for here are trusty hands waiting for 
him. The cardinal facts of European history are 
soon learned. There is Dante's poem, to open the 
Italian Republics of the Middle Age ; Dante's Vita 
Nuova, to explain Dante and Beatrice; and Boc- 
caccio's Life of Dante, — a great man to describe 
a greater. To help us, perhaps a volume or two 
of M. Sismondi's Italian Republics will be as good 
as the entire sixteen. When we come to Michael 
Angelo, his Sonnets and Letters must be read, 
with his Life by Vasari, or, in our day, by Herman 
Grimm. For the Church, and the Feudal Institu- 
tion, Mr. Hallam's Middle Ages will furnish, if 
superficial, yet readable and conceivable outlines. 

The Life of the Emperor Charles V., by the use- 
ful Robertson, is still the key of the following age. 
Ximenes, Columbus, Loyola, Luther, Erasmus, 
Melanchthon, Francis I., Henry VIII. , Elizabeth, 



BOOKS 293 

and Henry IV. of France, are his contemporaries. 
It is a time of seeds and expansions, whereof our 
recent civiHzation is the fruit. 

If now the relations of England to European 
affairs bring him to British ground, he is ar- 
rived at the very moment when modern history 
takes new proportions. He can look back for the 
legends and mythology to the Younger Edda, and 
the Heimshringla of Snorro Sturleson, to Mallet's 
Northern Antiquities, to Ellis's Metrical Ro- 
mances, to Asser's Life of Alfred and Venerable 
Bede, and to the researches of Sharon Turner and 
Palgrave. Hume will serve him for an intelligent 
guide, and in the Elizabethan era he is at the rich- 
est period of the English mind, with the chief men 
of action and of thought which that nation has 
produced, and with a pregnant future before him. 
Here he has Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, 
Raleigh, Bacon, Chapman, Jonson, Ford, Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, Herbert, Donne, Herrick; and 
Milton, Marvell, and Dryden, not long after. 

In reading history, he is to prefer the history 
of individuals. He will not repent the time he 
gives to Bacon, — not if he read the Advancement 
of Learning, the Essays^ the Novum Organum, the 
History of Henry VIL, and then all the Letters 
(especially those to the Earl of Devonshire, ex- 
plaining the Essex business), and all but his 
Apophthegms. 



294 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

The task is aided by the strong mutual light 
which these men shed on each other. Thus, the 
works of Ben Jonson are a sort of hoop to bind 
all these fine persons together, and to the land to 
which they belong. He has written verses to or 
on all his notable contemporaries ; and what with 
so many occasional poems, and the portrait 
sketches in his Discoveries, and the gossiping 
record of his opinions in his conversations with 
Drummond of Hawthornden, he has really illus- 
trated the England of his time, if not to the same 
extent, yet much in the same way, as Walter Scott 
has celebrated the persons and places of Scotland. 
Walton, Chapman, Herrick, and Sir Henry Wot- 
ton, write also to the times. 

Among the best books are certain Autobiogra- 
phies: as, St. Augustine's Confessions; Benvenuto 
Cellini's Life ; Montaigne's Essays ; Lord Herbert 
of Cherbury's Memoirs ; Memoirs of the Cardinal 
de Retz ; Rousseau's Confessions ; Linnseus's 
Diary ; Gibbon's, Hume's, Franklin's, Burns's, 
Alfieri's, Goethe's, and Haydon's Autobiogra- 
phies. 

Another class of books closely allied to these, 
and of like interest, are those which may be called 
Table-Talks: of which the best are Saadi's 
Gulistan ; Luther's Table-Talk ; Aubrey's Lives ; 
Spence's Anecdotes ; Selden's Table-Talk ; Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson ; Eckermann's Conversations 



BOOKS 295 

with Goethe; Coleridge's Table-Talk; and Haz- 
litt's Life of Northcote. 

There is a class whose value I should designate 
as Favorites: such as Froissart's Chronicles; 
Southey's Chronicle of the Cid ; Cervantes ; Sully's 
Memoirs; Rabelais; Montaigne; Izaak Walton; 
Evelyn; Sir Thomas Browne; Aubrey; Sterne; 
Horace Walpole ; Lord Clarendon ; Doctor John- 
son ; Burke, shedding floods of light on his times ; 
Lamb ; Landor ; and De Quincey ; — a list, of course, 
that may easily be swelled, as dependent on indi- 
vidual caprice. Many men are as tender and ir- 
ritable as lovers in reference to these predilections. 
Indeed, a man's library is a sort of harem, and 
I observe that tender readers have a great pudency 
in showing their books to a stranger. 

The annals of bibliography afford many exam- 
ples of the delirious extent to which book-fancying 
can go, when the legitimate delight in a book is 
transferred to a rare edition or to a manuscript. 
This mania reached its height about the beginning 
of the present century. For an autograph of 
Shakspeare one hundred and fifty-five guineas 
were given. In May, 1812, the library of the 
Duke of Roxburgh was sold. The sale lasted 
forty-two days, — we abridge the story from Dib- 
din, — and among the many curiosities was a copy 
of Boccaccio, published by Valdarfer, at Venice, 
in 1471, the only perfect copy of this edition. 



296 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Among the distinguished company which attended 
the sale were the Duke of Devonshire, Earl 
Spencer, and the Duke of Marlborough, then Mar- 
quis of Blandford. The bid stood at five hundred 
guineas. " A thousand guineas," said Earl 
Spencer. " And ten," added the Marquis. You 
might hear a pin drop. All eyes were bent on 
the bidders. Now they talked apart, now ate a 
biscuit, now made a bid, but without the least 
thought of yielding one to the other. But to pass 
over some details, — the contest proceeded until 
the Marquis said, " Two thousand pounds." The 
Earl Spencer bethought him like a prudent gen- 
eral of useless bloodshed and waste of powder, and 
had paused a quarter of a minute, when Lord Al- 
thorp, with long steps, came to his side, as if to 
bring his father a fresh lance to renew the fight. 
Father and son whispered together, and Earl 
Spencer exclaimed, " Two thousand two hundred 
and fifty pounds ! " An electric shock went 
through the assembly. " And ten," quietly added 
the Marquis. There ended the strife. Ere Evans 
let the hammer fall, he paused ; the ivory instru- 
ment swept the air; the spectators stood dumb, 
when the hammer fell. The stroke of its fall 
sounded on the farthest shores of Italy. The tap 
of that hammer was heard in the libraries of Rome, 
Milan, and Venice. Boccaccio stirred in his sleep 
of five hundred years, and M. Van Praet groped 



BOOKS 297 

in vain among the royal alcoves in Paris, to de- 
tect a copy of the famed Valdarfer Boccaccio. 

Another class I distinguish by the term Vocabu- 
laries, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is a book 
of great learning. To read it is like reading in a 
dictionary. 'Tis an inventory to remind us how 
many classes and species of facts exist, and, in 
observing into what strange and multiplex by-ways 
learning has strayed, to infer our opulence. 
Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There 
is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is 
full of suggestion, — the raw material of possible 
poems and histories. Nothing is wanting but a 
little shuffling, sorting, ligature, and cartilage. 
Out of a hundred examples, Cornelius Agrippa On 
the Vanity of Arts and Sciences is a specimen of 
that scribatiousness which grew to be the habit of 
the gluttonous readers of his time. Like the 
modern Germans, they read a literature while 
other mortals read a few books. They read vo- 
raciously, and must disburden themselves ; so they 
take any general topic, as. Melancholy, or Praise 
of Science, or Praise of Folly, and write and quote 
without method or end. Now and then out of that 
affluence of their learning comes a fine sentence 
from Theophrastus, or Seneca, or Boethius, but 
no high method, no inspiring efflux. But one can- 
not afford to read for a few sentences; they are 
good only as strings of suggestive words. 



S98 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

There is another class, more needful to the 
present age, because the currents of custom run 
now in another direction, and leave us dry on this 
side ; — I mean the Imaginative. A right meta- 
physics should do justice to the co-ordinate powers 
of Imagination, Insight, Understanding, and Will. 
Poetry, with its aids of Mythology and Romance, 
must be well allowed for an imaginative creature. 
Men are ever lapsing into a beggarly habit, 
wherein everything that is not ciphering — that is, 
which does not serve the tyrannical animal — is 
hustled out of sight. Our orators and writers are 
of the same poverty, and, in this rag-fair, neither 
the Imagination, the great awakening power, nor 
the Morals, creative of genius and of men, are ad- 
dressed. But though orator and poet be of this 
hunger party, the capacities remain. We must 
have symbols. The child asks you for a story, and 
is thankful for the poorest. It is not poor to him, 
but radiant with meaning. The man asks for a 
novel, — that is, asks leave for a few hours to be 
a poet, and to paint things as they ought to be. 
The youth asks for a poem. The very dunces wish 
to go to the theatre. What private heavens can 
we not open, by yielding to all the suggestion of 
rich music ! We must have idolatries, mythologies, 
— ^some swing and verge for the creative power 
lying coiled and cramped here, driving ardent na- 
tures to insanity and crime if it do not find vent. 



BOOKS 299 

Without the great arts which speak to the sense 
of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shiv- 
ering creature. These are his becoming draperies, 
which warm and adorn him. Whilst the prudential 
and economical tone of society starves the imagina- 
tion, affronted Nature gets such indemnity as 
she may. The novel is that allowance and frolic 
the imagination finds. Everything else pins it 
down, and men flee for redress to Byron, Scott, 
Disraeli, Dumas, Sand, Balzac, Dickens, Thack- 
eray, and Reade. Their education is neglected; 
but the circulating-library and the theatre, as 
well as the trout-fishing, the Notch Mountains, the 
Adirondack country, the tour to Mont Blanc, to 
the White Hills, and the Ghauts, make such amends 
as they can. 

The imagination infuses a certain volatility and 
intoxication. It has a flute which sets the atoms 
of our frame in a dance, like planets ; and, once so 
liberated, the whole man reeling drunk to the 
music, they never quite subside to their old stony 
state. But what is the imagination .^ Only an 
arm or weapon of the interior energy ; only the 
precursor of the reason. And books that treat the 
old pedantries of the world, our times, places, 
professions, customs, opinions, histories, with a 
certain freedom, and distribute things, not after 
the usages of America and Europe, but after the 
laws of right reason, and with as daring a 



300 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

freedom as we use in dreams, put us on our 
feet again, enable us to form an original judg- 
ment of our duties, and suggest new thoughts for 
to-morrow. 

Lucrezia Floriani, Le PecJie de M. Antoine, 
Jeanne, and Consuelo, of George Sand, are great 
steps from the novel of one termination, which we 
all read twenty 3^ears ago. Yet how far off from 
life and manners and motives the novel still is ! 
Life lies about us dumb ; the day, as we know it, 
has not yet found a tongue. These stories are to 
the plots of real life what the figures in La Belle 
Assemhlee, which represent the fashion of the 
month, are to portraits. But the novel will find 
the way to our interiors one day, and will not al- 
ways be the novel of costume merely. I do not 
think it inoperative now. So much novel-reading 
cannot leave the young men and maidens un- 
touched; and doubtless it gives some ideal dignity 
to the day. The young study noble behavior ; and 
as the player in Consuelo insists that he and his 
colleagues on the boards have taught princes the 
fine etiquette and strokes of grace and dignity 
which they practice with so much effect in their 
villas and among their dependents, so I often see 
traces of the Scotch or the French novel in the 
courtesy and brilliancy of young midshipmen, col- 
legians, and clerks. Indeed, when one observes 
how ill and ugly people make their loves and quar- 



BOOKS 301 

rels, 'tis pity they should not read novels a little 
more, to import the fine generosities, and the clear, 
firm conduct, which are as becoming in the unions 
and separations which love effects under shingle 
roofs as in palaces and among illustrious per- 
sonages. 

In novels the most serious questions are begin- 
ning to be discussed. What made the popularity 
of Jane Eyre, but that a central question was 
answered in some sort.^^ The question there an- 
swered in regard to a vicious marriage will always 
be treated according to the habit of the party. 
A person of commanding individualism will answer 
it as Rochester does, — as Cleopatra, as Milton, as 
George Sand do, — magnifying the exception into 
a rule, dwarfing the world into an exception. A 
person of less courage, that is, of less constitution, 
will answer as the heroine does, — giving way to 
fate, to conventionalism, to the actual state and 
doings of men and women. 

For the most part, our novel-reading is a pas- 
sion for results. We admire parks, and high-born 
beauties, and the homage of drawing-rooms, and 
parliaments. They make us sceptical, by giving 
prominence to wealth and social position. 

I remember when some peering eyes of boys dis- 
covered that the oranges hanging on the boughs 
of an orange-tree in a gay piazza were tied to the 
twigs by thread. I fear 'tis so with the novelist's 



302 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

prosperities. Nature has a magic by which she 
fits the man to his fortunes, by making them the 
fruit of his character. But the novehst plucks 
this event here, and that fortune there, and ties 
them rashly to his figures, to tickle the fancy of 
his readers with a cloying success, or scare them 
with shocks of tragedy. And so, on the whole, 
'tis a juggle. We are cheated into laughter or 
wonder by feats which only oddly combine acts 
that we do every day. There is no new element, 
no power, no furtherance. 'Tis only confection- 
ery, not the raising of new corn. Great is the 
poverty of their inventions. She was beautiful, 
and he fell in love. Money, and killing, and the 
Wandering Jew, and persuading the lover that his 
mistress is betrothed to another, — these are the 
main-springs : new names, but no new qualities in 
the men and women. Hence the vain endeavor to 
keep any bit of this fairy gold, which has rolled 
like a brook through our hands. A thousand 
thoughts awoke; great rainbows seemed to span 
the sky, — a morning among the mountains ; — ^but 
we close the book, and not a ray remains in the 
m.emory of evening. But this passion for romance, 
and this disappointment, show how much we need 
real elevations and pure poetry : that which shall 
show us, in morning and night, in stars and moun- 
tains, and in all the plight and circumstance of 
men^ the analogous of our own thoughts, and a 



BOOKS 303 

like impression made by a just book and by the 
face of Nature. 

If our times are sterile in genius, we must cheer 
us with books of rich and believing men who had 
atmosphere and amplitude about them. Every 
good fable, every mythology, every biography 
from a religious age, every passage of love, and 
even philosophy and science, when they proceed 
from an intellectual integrity, and are not de- 
tached and critical, have the imaginative element. 
The Greek fables, the Persian History (Firdusi), 
the Younger Edda of the Scandinavians, the 
Chronicle of the Cid, the Poem of Dante, the Son- 
nets of Michael Angelo, the English drama of 
Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ford, 
and even the prose of Bacon and Milton, — in our 
time, the Ode of Wordsworth, and the poems and 
the prose of Goethe, have this enlargement, and in- 
spire hope and generous attempts. 

There is no room left, — and yet I might as well 
not have begun as to leave out a class of books 
which are the best : I mean the Bibles of the world, 
or the sacred books of each nation, which express 
for each the supreme result of their experience. 
After the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which 
constitute the sacred books of Christendom, these 
are, the Desatir of the Persians, and the Zoroas- 
trian Oracles ; the Vedas and Laws of Menu ; the 
Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagvat 



804 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Geeta, of the Hindoos ; the books of the Buddhists ; 
the Chinese ClassiCy of four books, containing the 
wisdom of Confucius and Mencius. Also such 
other books as have acquired a semi-canonical au- 
thority in the world as expressing the highest 
sentiment and hope of nations. Such are the 
Hermes Trismegistus, pretending to be Egyptian 
remains ; the Sentences of Epictetus ; of Marcus 
Antoninus ; the Vishnu Sarma of the Hindoos ; the 
Gulistan of Saadi; the Imitation of Christ, 
of Thomas a Kempis ; and the Thoughts of 
Pascal. 

All these books are the majestic expressions of 
the universal conscience, and are more to our daily 
purpose than this year's almanac or this day's 
newspaper. But they are for the closet, and to 
be read on the bended knee. Their communica- 
tions are not to be given or taken with the lips 
and the end of the tongue, but out of the glow of 
the cheek, and with the throbbing heart. Friend- 
ship should give and take, solitude and time brood 
and ripen, heroes absorb and enact them. They 
are not to be held by letters printed on a page, 
but are living characters translatable into every 
tongue and form of life. I read them on lichens 
and bark; I watch them on waves on the beach; 
they fly in birds, they creep in worms ; I detect 
them in laughter and blushes and eye-sparkles of 
men and women. These are Scriptures which the 



BOOKS 305 

missionary might well carry over prairie, desert, 
and ocean, to Siberia, Japan, Timbuctoo. Yet he 
will find that the spirit which is in them journeys 
faster than he, and greets him on his arrival, — 
was there already long before him. The mission- 
ary must be carried by it, and find it there, or 
he goes in vain. Is there any geography in these 
things? We call them Asiatic, we call them pri- 
meval; but perhaps that is only optical; for Na- 
ture is always equal to herself, and there are as 
good eyes and ears now in the planet as ever were. 
Only these ejaculations of the soul are uttered one 
or a few at a time, at long intervals, and it takes 
millenniums to make a Bible. 

These are a few of the books which the old and 
the later times have yielded us, which will reward 
the time spent on them. In comparing the number 
of good books with the shortness of life, many 
might well be read by proxy, if we had good 
proxies ; and it would be well for sincere young 
men to borrow a hint from the French Institute 
and the British Association, and, as they divide the 
whole body into sections, each of which sits upon 
and reports of certain matters confided to it, so 
let each scholar associate himself to such persons 
as he can rely on, in a literary club, in which each 
shall undertake a single work or series for which 
he is qualified. For example, how attractive is the 
whole literature of the Roman de la Rose, the 



S06 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Fahliau^^ and the gaie science ^ of the French 
Troubadours ! Yet who in Boston has time for 
that? But one of our company shall undertake 
it, shall study and master it, and shall report on 
it, as under oath ; shall give us the sincere result, 
as it lies in his mind, adding nothing, keeping 
nothing back. Another member, meantime, shall 
as honestly search, sift, and as truly report, on 
British mythology, the Round Table, the histories 
of Brut, Merlin, and Welsh poetry ; a third on the 
Saxon Chronicles, Robert of Gloucester, and Wil- 
liam of Malmesbury; a fourth, on Mysteries, 
Early Drama, Gesta Romanorum, Collier, and 
Dyce, and the Camden Society. Each shall give 
us his grains of gold, after the washing ; and every 
other shall then decide whether this is a book in- 
dispensable to him also. 

* Short metrical tales popular in the Middle Ages, usually 
comic and satirical. 

^ Literally " gay science," — the poetry of the troubadours 
and the trouveres. 



THE WORKING OF 
THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY^ 

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

I PURPOSE to examine some parts of the ex- 
perience of the American democracy, with the 
intention of suggesting the answers to certain 
theoretical objections which have been urged 
against democracy in general, and of showing in 
part what makes the strength of the democratic 
form of government. 

For more than a hundred years there has been 
among civilized nations a decided set of opinion 
toward democratic institutions ; but in Europe this 
set has been determined rather by unfavorable ex- 
perience of despotic and oligarchic forms of gov- 
ernment than by any favorable experience of the 
democratic form. Government by one and gov- 
ernment by a few have been tried through many 
centuries, by different races of men, and under all 
sorts of conditions ; but neither has ever succeeded 

^ Reprinted from American Contributions to Civilization, 
New York, 1907, through the generous permission of the 
author and of The Century Company. Copyright, 1890, by 
The Century Company. 

307 



308 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

— not even in England — in producing a reason- 
ably peaceful, secure, and also happy society. No 
lesson upon this subject could be more forcible 
than that which modern Europe teaches. Empires 
and monarchies, like patriarchies and chieftain- 
ships, have doubtless served their turn ; but they 
have signally failed to realize the social ideals 
— some ancient and some modern in origin — 
which have taken firm hold of men's minds since 
the American Revolution. This failure extends 
through all society, from top to bottom. It is as 
conspicuous in the moral condition of the upper 
classes as in the material condition of the lower. 
Oligarchies call themselves aristocracies ; but gov- 
ernment by the few has never really been govern- 
ment by the best. Therefore mankind tends to 
seek the realization of its ideals in broad-based 
forms of government. 

It can hardly be said that Europe has any ex- 
perience of democracy which is applicable to a 
modern state. Gallant little Switzerland lives in 
a mountain fastness, and exists by the sufferance 
of powerful neighbors, each jealous of the other. 
No lessons for modern use can be drawn from the 
transient city democracies of ancient or medieval 
times. The city as a unit of government organiza- 
tion has gone forever, with the glories of Athens, 
Rome, and Florence. Throughout this century a 
beneficent tendency has been manifested toward 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 309 

the formation of great national units. Witness the 
expansion of Russia and the United States, the 
creation of the German empire, the union of Aus- 
tria, Hungary, and Bohemia, and the unification 
of Italy. At least, within these great units prevail 
a common peace and an unrestricted trade. The 
blessings which result from holding vast territories 
and multitudes under one national government are 
so great that none but large governments have any 
future before them. To succeed, democracy must 
show itself able to control both territory and popu- 
lation on a continental scale ; therefore its methods 
must be representative — which means that they 
are necessarily deliberative, and are likely to be 
conservative and slow. Of such government by 
the many, Europe has no trustworthy experience, 
either in ancient or in modern times. The so- 
called democracies of Greece and Rome were really 
governments by a small caste of free citizens rul- 
ing a multitude of aliens and slaves: hasty and 
tyrannical themselves, they naturally prepared the 
way for tyrants. Yet when all the world were 
slaves, that caste of free citizens was a wonderful 
invention. France, since the Revolution, has ex- 
hibited some fugitive specimens of democratic 
rule, but has had no stable government of any 
sort, whether tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy. 
In short, such experience as Europe has had of so- 
called democracies — with the exception of admira- 



310 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

ble Switzerland — is worse than useless ; for it is 
thoroughly misleading, and has misled many acute 
observers of political phenomena. 

In this absence of available European experi- 
ence, where can mankind look for trustworthy 
evidence concerning the practical working of 
democratic institutions? Solely to the United 
States. The Australasian colonies will before long 
contribute valuable evidence ; but at present their 
population is small, and their experience is too re- 
cent to be of great value to students of compara- 
tive politics. Yet it is upon experience, and ex- 
perience alone, that safe conclusions can be based 
concerning the merits and the faults of democracy. 
On politics, speculative writing — even by able men 
like Sir George Cornewall Lewis ^ and Sir Henry 
Maine ^ — is as perilous as it is on biology ; and 
prophecy is still more dangerous. To the modern 
mind, ideal states like Plato's Republic, Sir 
Thomas More's Utopia, and Saint Augustine's 
Civitas Dei, are utterly uninteresting — particu- 
larly when they rest upon such visionary postu- 
lates as community of goods and community of 
wives and children. The stable state must have 
its roots in use and wont, in familiar customs and 
laws, and in the inherited habits of successive gen- 
erations. But it is only in the United States 

^ English statesman and man of letters (1806-1863). 
'^ English jurist and historian (1822-1888). 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 311 

that a well-rooted democracy upon a great scale 
has ever existed; and hence the importance of 
accurate observation and just judgment of the 
working of American democratic institutions, both 
political and social. Upon the success of those 
institutions rest the best hopes of the world. 

In discussing some parts of our national ex- 
perience, I intend to confine myself to moral and 
intellectual phenomena, and shall have little to say 
about the material prosperity of the country. The 
rapid growth of the United States in population, 
wealth, and everything which constitutes material 
strength is, indeed, marvelous ; but this concom- 
itant of the existence of democratic institutions 
in a fertile land, rich also in minerals, ores, oil, and 
gas, has often been dilated upon, and may be dis- 
missed with only two remarks : first, that a great 
deal of moral vigor has been put into the material 
development of the United States ; and secondly, 
that wide-spread comfort ought to promote rather 
than to hinder the civilizing of a people. Sensible 
and righteous government ought ultimately to 
make a nation rich ; and although this proposition 
cannot be directly reversed, yet diffused well-being, 
comfort, and material prosperity establish a fair 
presumption in favor of the government and the 
prevailing social conditions under which these 
blessings have been secured. 



SU CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

The first question I wish to deal with is a funda- 
mental one : How wisely, and by what process, has 
the American people made up its mind upon public 
questions of supreme difficulty and importance? 
Not how will it, or how might it, make up its 
mind; but how has it made up its mind? It is 
commonly said that the multitude, being ignorant 
and untrained, cannot reach so wise a conclusion 
upon questions of state as the cultivated few; 
that the wisdom of a mass of men can only be an 
average wisdom at the best ; and that democracy, 
which in things material levels up, in things intel- 
lectual and moral levels down. Even De Tocque- 
ville ^ says that there is a middling standard of 
knowledge in a democracy, to which some rise and 
others descend. Let us put these speculative opin- 
ions, which have so plausible a sound, in contrast 
with American facts, and see what conclusions are 
to be drawn. 

The people of this country have had three su- 
preme questions to settle within the last hundred 
and thirty years : first, the question of independ- 
ence of Great Britain ; secondly, the question of 
forming a firm federal union ; and thirdly, the ques- 
tion of maintaining that union at whatever cost 
of blood and treasure. In the decision of these 

^Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), a French statesman 
and political writer. His best known work is Democracy 
in America. 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 313 

questions, four generations of men took active 
part. The first two questions were settled by a 
population mainly English ; but when the third was 
decided, the foreign admixture was already con- 
siderable. That graver or more far-reaching 
political problems could be presented to any peo- 
ple, it is impossible to imagine. Everybody can 
now see that in each case the only wise decision was 
arrived at by the multitude, in spite of difficulties 
and dangers which many contemporary statesmen 
and publicists of our own and other lands thought 
insuperable. It is quite the fashion to laud to the 
skies the second of these three great achievements 
of the American democracy ; but the creation of 
the Federal Union, regarded as a wise determina- 
tion of a multitude of voters, was certainly not 
more remarkable than the other two. No govern- 
ment — tyranny or oligarchy, despotic or constitu- 
tional — could possibly have made wiser decisions 
or executed them more resolutely, as the event has 
proved in each of the three cases mentioned. 

So much for the wisdom of these great resolves. 
Now, by what process were they arrived at.f^ 

In each case the process was slow, covering 
many years during which discussion and debate 
went on in pulpits, legislatures, public meetings, 
newspapers, and books. The best minds of the 
country took part in these prolonged debates. 
Party passions were aroused; advocates on each 



SU CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

side disputed before the people; the authority of 
recognized political leaders was invoked ; public 
spirit and selfish interest were appealed to; and 
that vague but powerful sentiment called love of 
country, felt equally by high and low, stirred men's 
hearts and lit the intellectual combat with lofty 
emotion. In presence of such a protracted discus- 
sion, a multitude of interested men make up their 
minds just as one interested man does. They 
listen, compare what they hear with their own ex- 
perience, consider the bearings of the question on 
their own interests, and consult their self-respect, 
their hopes, and their fears. Not one in a thou- 
sand of them could originate, or even state with 
precision, the arguments he hears ; not one in a 
thousand could give a clear account of his own ob- 
servations, processes of thought, and motives of 
action upon the subject, — but the collective judg- 
ment is informed and guided by the keener wits 
and stronger wills, and the collective wisdom is 
higher and surer in guiding public conduct than 
that of one mind or of several superior minds un- 
instructed by million-eyed observation and million- 
tongued debate. 

In all three of the great popular decisions under 
consideration, most remarkable discernment, pa- 
tience, and resolution were, as a fact, displayed. If 
these were the average qualities of the many, then 
the average mental and moral powers of the multi- 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 315 

tude suffice for greatest deeds ; if they were the 
qualities of the superior few infused into the many 
by speech and press, by exhortation, example, and 
leadership, even then the assertion that the opera- 
tive opinions of the unlearned mass on questions 
of state must necessarily be foolish, their honesty 
only an ordinary honesty, and their sentiments 
vulgar, falls to the ground. The multitude, ii 
would seem, either can distil essential wisdom from 
a seething mass of heterogeneous evidence and 
opinion, or can be inspired, like a single individual, 
from without and above itself. If the practical 
wisdom of the multitude in action be attributed to 
the management or to the influence of a sagacious 
few, the wise result proves that these leaders were 
well chosen by some process of natural selection, 
instead of being designated, as in an oligarchy, by 
the inheritance of artificial privileges. 

It is fair to say that one reason why democratic 
decisions of great public questions are apt to turn 
out well, and therefore to seem to posterity to have 
been wise, is, that the state of the public mind and 
will is an all-important factor in determining the 
issue of such questions. Democracy vigorously 
executing its own purpose demonstrates by the 
issue its wisdom before the event. Indeed, this is 
one of the most legitimate and important advan- 
tages of the democratic form of government. 

There is a limited sense in which it is true that 



316 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

in the United States the average man predomi- 
nates ; but the political ideas which have predomi- 
nated in the United States, and therefore in the 
mind and will of the average man, — equality before 
the law, national independence, federation, and 
indissoluble union, — are ideas not of average but of 
superlative merit. It is also true that the common 
school and the newspaper echo received opinion, 
and harp on moral commonplaces. But unfortu- 
nately there are many accepted humane opinions 
and ethical commonplaces which have never yet 
been embodied in national legislation, — much less 
in international law, — and which may therefore 
still be repeated to some advantage. If that com- 
prehensive commonplace, " Ye are all members one 
of another," ^ could be realized in international 
relations, there would be an end of war and indus- 
trial isolation. 

Experience has shown that democracy must not 
be expected to decide wisely about things in which 
it feels no immediate concern. Unless its interests 
are affected or its sentiments touched, it will not 
take the pains necessary to arrive at just conclu- 
sions. To engage public attention sufficiently to 
procure legislation is the reformer's chief difficulty 
in a democracy. Questions of war, peace, or hu- 
man rights, and questions which concern the na- 
tional unity, dignity, or honor, win the attention of 

^ See Ephesians, iv. 25. 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 317 

the many. Indeed, the greatest political questionvS 
are precisely those in which the many have con- 
cern ; for they suffer the penalties of discord, war, 
and public wrong-doing. But it is curiously diffi- 
cult to secure from multitudes of voters effective 
dealing with questions which relate merely to taxa- 
tion, expenditure, administration, trade, or manu- 
factures. On these lesser matters the multitude 
will not declare itself until evils multiply intoler- 
ably. We need not be surprised, however, that the 
intelligence and judgment of the multitude can be 
brought into play only when they think their own 
interests are to be touched. All experience, both 
ancient and modern, shows that when the few 
rule, they do not attend to the interests of the 
many. 

I shall next consider certain forms of mental and 
moral activity which the American democracy de- 
mands of hundreds of thousands of the best citi- 
zens, but which are without parallel in despotic 
and oligarchic states. I refer to the widely dif- 
fused and ceaseless activity which maintains, first, 
the immense Federal Union, with all its various 
subdivisions into States, counties, and towns ; 
secondly, the voluntary system in religion ; and 
thirdly, the voluntary system in the higher in- 
struction. 

To have carried into successful practice on a 



318 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

great scale the federative principle, which binds 
many semi-independent States into one nation, is 
a good work done for all peoples. Federation 
promises to counteract the ferocious quarrelsome- 
ness of mankind, and to abolish the jealousy of 
trade ; but its price in mental labor and moral ini- 
tiative is high. It is a system which demands not 
only vital force at the heart of the state, but a 
diffused vitality in every part. In a despotic gov- 
ernment the intellectual and moral force of the 
whole organism radiates from the central seat of 
power ; in a federal union political vitality must be 
diffused throughout the whole organism, as animal 
heat is developed and maintained in every mole- 
cule of the entire body. The success of the United 
States as a federal union has been and is effected 
by the watchfulness, industry, and public spirit of 
millions of men who spend in that noble cause the 
greater part of their leisure, and of the mental 
force which can be spared from bread-winning 
occupations. The costly expenditure goes on with- 
out ceasing, all over the country, wherever citizens 
come together to attend to the affairs of the vil- 
lage, town, county, or State. This is the price of 
liberty and union. The well-known promptness 
and skill of Americans in organizing a new com- 
munity result from the fact that hundreds of 
thousands of Americans — and their fathers before 
them — have had practice in managing public af- 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 319 

fairs. To get this practice costs time, labor, and 
vitality, which in a despotic or oligarchic state are 
seldom spent in this direction. 

The successful establishment and support of re- 
ligious institutions, — churches, seminaries, and 
religious charities, — upon a purely voluntary sys- 
tem, is another unprecedented achievement of the 
American democracy. In only three generations 
American democratic society has effected the com- 
plete separation of church and state, a reform 
which no other people has ever attempted. Yet 
religious institutions are not stinted in the United 
States ; on the contrary, they abound and thrive, 
and all alike are protected and encouraged, but 
not supported, by the state. Who has taken up 
the work which the state has relinquished? Some- 
body has had to do it, for the work is done. Who 
provides the money to build churches, pay salaries, 
conduct missions, and educate ministers.^ Who 
supplies the brains for organizing and maintaining 
these various activities .? This is the work, not of 
a few officials, but of millions of intelligent and de- 
voted men and women scattered through all the 
villages and cities of the broad land. The main- 
tenance of churches, seminaries, and charities by 
voluntary contributions and by the administrative 
labors of volunteers, implies an enormous and in- 
cessant expenditure of mental and moral force. It 
is a force which must ever be renewed from genera- 



320 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

tion to generation ; for it is a personal force, con- 
stantly expiring, and as constantly to be replaced. 
Into the maintenance of the voluntary system in 
religion has gone a good part of the moral energy 
which three generations have been able to spare 
from the work of getting a living; but it is worth 
the sacrifice, and will be accounted in history one 
of the most remarkable feats of American public 
spirit and faith in freedom. 

A similar exhibition of diffused mental and 
moral energy has accompanied the establishment 
and the development of a system of higher instruc- 
tion in the United States, with no inheritance of 
monastic endowments, and no gifts from royal or 
ecclesiastical personages disposing of great re- 
sources derived from the state, and with but scanty 
help from the public purse. Whoever is familiar 
with the colleges and universities of the United 
States knows that the creation of these democratic 
institutions has cost the life-work of thousands of 
devoted men. At the sacrifice of other aspirations, 
and under heavy discouragements and disappoint- 
ments, but with faith and hope, these teachers and 
trustees have built up institutions, which, however 
imperfect, have cherished scientific enthusiasm, 
fostered piety, literature, art, and maintained the 
standards of honor and public duty, and steadily 
kept in view the ethical ideas which democracy 
cherishes. It has been a popular work, to which 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 321 

large numbers of people in successive generations 
have contributed of their substance or of their 
labor. The endowment of institutions of educa- 
tion, including libraries and museums, by private 
persons in the United States, is a phenomenon 
without precedent or parallel, and is a legitimate 
effect of democratic institutions. Under a tyr- 
anny — were it that of a Marcus Aurelius ^ — or 
an oligarchy — were it as enlightened as that which 
now rules Germany — such a phenomenon would be 
simply impossible. The University of Strasburg 
was lately established by an imperial decree, and 
is chiefly maintained out of the revenue of the 
state. Harvard University has been 250 years in 
growing to its present stature, and is even now 
inferior at many points to the new University of 
Strasburg; but Harvard is the creation of thou- 
sands of persons, living and dead, rich and poor, 
learned and simple, who have voluntarily given it 
their time, thought, or money, and lavished upon 
it their affection; Strasburg exists by the man- 
date of the ruling few directing upon it a part of 
the product of ordinary taxation. Like the volun- 
tary system in religion, the voluntary system in 
the higher education fortifies democracy; each de- 
mands from the community a large outlay of in- 
tellectual activity and moral vigor. 

^Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180), one of the best 
of the Roman emperors, author of the famous Meditations. 



322 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

There is another direction in which the people of 
the United States have spent and are now spending 
a vast amount of intellectual and moral energy — a 
direction not, as in the three cases just considered, 
absolutely peculiar to the American republic, but 
still highly characteristic of democracy. I mean 
the service of corporations. Within the last hun- 
dred years the American people have invented a 
new and large application of the ancient principle 
of incorporation. We are so accustomed to corpo- 
rations as indispensable agents in carrying on 
great public works and services, and great indus- 
trial or financial operations, that we forget the 
very recent development of the corporation with 
limited liability ^ as a common business agent. 
Prior to 1789 there were only two corporations 
for business purposes in Massachusetts. The 
English general statute which provides for incor- 
poration with limited liability dates only from 
1855. No other nation has made such general or 
such successful use of corporate powers as the 
American — and for the reason that the method is 
essentially a democratic method, suitable for a 
country in which great individual or family prop- 
erties are rare, and small properties are numerous. 

^ That is, " a public company whose members are individ- 
ually liable for the company's debts only to a specified 
amount, often not exceeding the amount of stock that each 
holds." 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 323 

Freedom of incorporation makes^ possible great 
combinations of small capitals, and, while winning 
the advantages of concentrated management, per- 
mits diffused ownership. These merits have been 
quickly understood and turned to account by the 
American democracy. The service of many cor- 
porations has become even more important than 
the service of the several States of the Union. 
The managers of great companies have trusts re- 
posed in them which are matched only in the high- 
est executive offices of the nation ; and they are 
relatively free from the numerous checks and re- 
strictions under which the highest national officials 
must always act. The activity of corporations, 
great and small, penetrates every part of the in- 
dustrial and social body, and their daily main- 
tenance brings into play more mental and moral 
force than the maintenance of all the governments 
on the Continent combined. 

These propositions can easily be illustrated by 
actual examples. I find established at Boston, for 
instance, the headquarters of a railroad corpora- 
tion which employs 18,000 persons, has gross re- 
ceipts of about $40,000,000 a year, and on occa- 
sion pays its best-paid officer a salary of $35,000. 
I find there also the central office of a manufactur- 
ing establishment which employs more than 6,000 
persons, has a gross annual income of more than 
$7,000,000, and pays its best-paid officer $20,000 



824 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

a year. The gross receipts of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad system are $115,000,000 a year, the 
highest-paid official of the company receives a 
salarj^ of $30,000, and the whole system employs 
100,000 men. A comparison of such figures with 
the corresponding figures for the prosperous and 
respectable Commonwealth of Massachusetts is 
not uninstructive. The gross receipts of the Com- 
monwealth are about $7,000,000 a year, the high- 
est salary it pays is $6,500, and there are not 
more than 6,000 persons in its employ for any 
considerable part of the year. 

In the light of such facts, it is easy to see some 
of the reasons why American corporations com- 
mand the services of men of high capacity and 
character, who in other countries or in earlier 
times would have been in the service of the state. 
In American democratic society corporations sup- 
plement the agencies of the state, and their 
functions have such importance in determining 
conditions of labor, diffusing comfort and general 
well-being among millions of people, and utilizing 
innumerable large streams and little rills of cap- 
ital, that the upper grades of their service are 
reached by merit, are filled, as a rule, upon a tenure 
during good behavior and efficiency, are well paid, 
and have great dignity and consideration. Of the 
enormous material benefits which have resulted 
from the American extension of the principle of in- 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 325 

corporation, I need say nothing. I wish only to 
point out that freedom of incorporation, though 
no longer exclusively a democratic agency, has 
given strong support to democratic institutions ; 
and that a great wealth of intellect, energy, and 
fidelity is devoted to the service of corporations 
by their officers and directors. 

The four forms of mental and moral activity 
which I have been considering — that which 
maintains political vitality throughout the Fed- 
eral Union ; that which supports unsubsidized 
religious institutions ; that which develops the 
higher instruction in the arts and sciences, 
and trains men for all the professions ; and 
that which is applied to the service of cor- 
porations — all illustrate the educating influence 
of democratic institutions — an influence which 
foreign observers are apt to overlook or 
underestimate. The ballot is not the only political 
institution which has educated the American 
democracy. Democracy is a training-school in 
which multitudes learn in many ways to take 
thought for others, to exercise public functions, 
and to bear public responsibilities. 

So many critics of the theory of democracy have 
maintained that a democratic government would 
be careless of public obligations, and unjust to- 
ward private property, that it will be interesting 
to inquire what a century of American experience 



326 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

indicates upon this important point. Has there 
been any disposition on the part of the American 
democracy to create exaggerated public debts, to 
throw the burden of public debts on posterity 
rather than on the present generation, or to favor 
in legislation the poorer sort as against the richer, 
the debtor as against the creditor? 

The answer to the question is not doubtful. 
With the exception of the sudden creation of the 
great national debt occasioned by the Civil War, 
the American communities have been very moder- 
ate in borrowing, the State debts being for the 
most part insignificant, and the city debts far 
below the English standard. Moreover, these 
democratic communities, with a few local and 
temporary exceptions, pay their public debts more 
promptly than any state under the rule of a 
despot or a class has ever done. The government 
of the United States has once paid the whole of its 
public debt, and is in a fair way to perform that 
feat again. So much for democratic treatment of 
public obligations. 

It is conceivable, however, that the popular 
masses should think it for their own interest to 
keep down and pay off public indebtedness, and 
yet should discriminate in legislation in favor of 
the majority who are not well off, and against 
the minority who are. There are two points, and 
only two points, so far as I know, at which perma- 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 327 

nent American legislation has, as a fact, intention- 
ally discriminated in favor of the poor. The 
several States, as a rule, exempt from taxation 
household effects and personal property to a mod- 
erate amount, and the tools of farmers and me- 
chanics. The same articles and a few others like 
them are also commonly exempted from attach- 
ment for debt, together often with a homestead 
not exceeding in value one thousand dollars. The 
exemptions from attachment, and even those from 
taxation, will cover all the property of many poor 
persons and families ; yet this legislation is hu- 
mane and worthy of respect, being analogous to 
the common provision which exempts from all 
taxation persons who, by reason of age or infirm- 
ity, may, in the judgment of the assessors, be 
unable to contribute to the public charges. It is 
intended to prevent cases of hardship in the col- 
lection either of taxes or of debts ; and doubtless 
the exemptions from attachment are designed also 
to leave to the debtor a fair chance of recovery. 
After observing the facts of a full century, one 
may therefore say of the American democracy 
that it has contracted public debt with modera- 
tion, paid it with unexampled promptness, ac- 
quired as good a public credit as the world has 
ever known, made private property secure, and 
shown no tendency to attack riches or to subsi- 
dize poverty, or in either direction to violate the 



828 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

fundamental principle of democracy, that all men 
are equal before the law. The significance of these 
facts is prodigious. They mean that, as regards 
private property and its security, a government 
by the many, for the many, is more to be trusted 
than any other form of government; and that as 
regards public indebtedness, an experienced de- 
mocracy is more likely to exhibit just sentiments 
and practical good judgment than an oligarchy 
or a tyranny. 

An argument against democracy, which evi- 
dently had great weight with Sir Henry Maine, 
because he supposed it to rest upon the experience 
of mankind, is stated as follows : Progress and 
reformation have always been the work of the 
few, and have been opposed by the many; there- 
fore democracies will be obstructive. This argu- 
ment is completely refuted by the first cen- 
tury of the American democracy, alike in the 
field of morals and jurisprudence, and the field 
of manufactures and trade. Nowhere, for in- 
stance, has the great principle of religious tolera- 
tion been so thoroughly put in practice as in the 
United States ; nowhere have such well-meant 
and persistent efforts been made to improve the 
legal status of women ; nowhere has the con- 
duct of hospitals, asylums, reformatories, and 
prisons been more carefully studied ; nowhere have 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 329 

legislative remedies for acknowledged abuses and 
evils been more promptly and perseveringly 
sought. There was a certain plausibility in the 
idea that the multitude, who live by labor in es- 
tablished modes, would be opposed to inventions 
which would inevitably cause industrial revolu- 
tions ; but American experience completely upsets 
this notion. For promptness in making physical 
forces and machinery do the work of men, the 
people of the United States surpass incontestably 
all other peoples. The people that invented and 
introduced with perfect commercial success the 
river steamboat, the cotton-gin, the parlor-car 
and the sleeping-car, the grain-elevator, the street 
railway — both surface and elevated — the tele- 
graph, the telephone, the rapid printing-press, 
the cheap book and newspaper, the sewing-ma- 
chine, the steam fire-engine, agricultural machin- 
ery, the pipe-lines for natural oil and gas, and 
machine-made clothing, boots, furniture, tools, 
screws, wagons, fire-arms, and watches — this is 
not a people to vote down or hinder labor-saving 
invention or beneficent industrial revolution. The 
fact is that in a democracy the interests of the 
greater number will ultimately prevail, as they 
should. It was the stage-drivers and inn-keepers, 
not the multitude, who wished to suppress the loco- 
motive ; it is some publishers and typographical 
unions, not the mass of the people, who wrongly 



S30 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

imagine that they have an interest in making 
books dearer than they need be. Furthermore, a 
just liberty of combination and perfect equality 
before the law, such as prevail in a democracy, 
enable men or companies to engage freely in new 
undertakings at their own risk, and bring them 
to triumphant success, if success be in them, 
whether the multitude approve them or not. The 
consent of the multitude is not necessary to the 
success of a printing-press which prints twenty 
thousand copies of a newspaper in an hour, or of 
a machine cutter which cuts out twenty overcoats 
at one chop. In short, the notion that democracy 
will hinder religious, political, and social reforma- 
tion and progress, or restrain commercial and in- 
dustrial improvement, is a chimera. 

There is another criticism of the working of 
democratic institutions, more formidable than the 
last, which the American democracy is in a fair 
way to dispose of. It is said that democracy is 
fighting against the best-determined and most per- 
emptory of biological laws, namely, the law of 
heredity, with which law the social structure of 
monarchical and oligarchical states is in strict 
conformity. This criticism fails to recognize the 
distinction between artificial privileges transmis- 
sible without regard to inherited virtues or powers, 
and inheritable virtues or powers transmissible 
without regard to hereditary privileges. Artificial 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 331 

privileges will be abolished by a democracy ; nat- 
ural, inheritable virtues or powers are as surely 
transmissible under a democracy as under any 
other form of government. Families can be made 
just as enduring in a democratic as in an oli- 
garchic State, if family permanence be desired and 
aimed at. The desire for the continuity of vig- 
orous families, and for the reproduction of beauty, 
genius, and nobility of character, is universal. 
" From fairest creatures we desire increase " ^ is 
the commonest of sentiments. The American 
multitude will not take the children of distin- 
guished persons on trust ; but it is delighted when 
an able man has an abler son, or a lovely mother 
a lovelier daughter. That a democracy does not 
prescribe the close intermarriage which charac- 
terizes a strict aristocracy, so-called, is physically 
not a disadvantage, but a great advantage for the 
freer society. The French nobility and the Eng- 
lish House of Lords furnish good evidence that 
aristocracies do not succeed in perpetuating select 
types of intellect or of character. 

In the future there will undoubtedly be seen a 
great increase in the number of permanent families 
in the United States — families in which honor, 
education, and property will be transmitted with 
reasonable certainty ; and a fair beginning has al- 
ready been made. On the quinquennial catalogue 

^ Shakespeare, Sonnet I. 



332 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

of Harvard University there are about five hun- 
dred and sixty family stocks, which have been 
represented by graduates at intervals for at least 
one hundred years. On the Yale catalogue there 
are about four hundred and twenty such family 
stocks; and it is probable that all other American 
colleges which have existed one hundred years or 
more show similar facts in proportion to their 
age and to the number of their graduates. There 
is nothing in American institutions to prevent this 
natural process from extending and continuing. 
The college graduate who does not send his son to 
college is a curious exception. American colleges 
are, indeed, chiefly recruited from the sons of men 
who were not college-bred themselves ; for demo- 
cratic society is mobile, and permits young men 
of ability to rise easily from the lower to the 
higher levels. But on the other hand nothing in 
the constitution of society forces men down who 
have once risen, or prevents their children or 
grandchildren from staying on the higher level if 
they have the virtue in them. 

The interest in family genealogies has much in- 
creased of late years, and hundreds of thousands 
of persons are already recorded in printed vol- 
umes which have been compiled and published by 
voluntary contributions or by the zeal of individ- 
uals. In the Harvard University Library are 
four hundred and fifteen American family gene- 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 333 

alogies, three quarters of which have been printed 
since 1860. Many of these famihes might better 
be called clans or tribes, so numerous is their mem- 
bership. Thus of the Northampton Lyman family 
there were living, when the family genealogy was 
published in 1872, more than four thousand per- 
sons. When some American Galton ^ desires in the 
next century to study hereditary genius or char- 
acter under a democracy, he will find ready to his 
hand an enormous mass of material. There are 
in the United States one hundred and forty-eight 
historical societies, most of them recently estab- 
lished, which give a large share of their attention 
to biography, genealogy, necrology, and kindred 
topics. Persons and families of local note, the 
settlement and development of new towns, and the 
rise of new industries are commemorated by these 
societies, which are accumulating and preserving 
materials for the philosophical historian who shall 
hereafter describe the social condition of a de- 
mocracy which in a hundred years overran the 
habitable parts of a continent. 

Two things are necessary to a family perma- 
nence — education and bodily vigor, in every gen- 
eration. To secure these two things, the holding 
and the transmission of moderate properties in 
families must be so well provided for by law and 

* Sir Francis Gallon (1822-1911), an English scientist 
and anthropologist. 



S34 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

custom as to be possible for large numbers of fam- 
ilies. For the objects in view, great properties 
are not so desirable as moderate or even small 
properties, since the transmission of health and 
education with great properties is not so sure as 
with small properties. It is worth while to in- 
quire, therefore, what has been accomplished under 
the reign of the American democracy in the way 
of making the holding and the transmission of 
small properties possible. In the first place, safe 
investments for moderate sums have been greatly 
multiplied and made accessible, as every trustee 
knows. Great trust-investment companies have 
been created expressly to hold money safely, and 
make it yield a sure though small income. The 
savings-bank and the insurance company have been 
brought to every man's door, the latter insuring 
against almost every kind of disaster to which 
property and earning capacity are liable. Life 
insurance has been regulated and fostered, with 
the result of increasing materially the stability of 
households and the chances of transmitting educa- 
tion in families. Through these and other agen- 
cies it has been made more probable that widows 
and orphans will inherit property, as well as easier 
for them to hold that property securely — a very 
important point in connection with the perma- 
nence of families, as may be strikingly illustrated 
by the single statement that eighteen per cent of 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 335 

the students in Harvard College have no fathers 
living. Many new employments have been opened 
to women, who have thus been enabled more easily 
to hold families together and educate their chil- 
dren. Finally, society has been saved in great 
measure from war and revolution, and from the 
fear of these calamities ; and thus family property, 
as well as happiness, has been rendered more 
secure. 

The holding and the transmission of property 
in families are, however, only means to two ends 
— namely, education and health in successive gen- 
erations. From the first, the American democracy 
recognized the fact that education was of su- 
preme importance to it — the elementary education 
for all, the higher for all the naturally selected ; 
but it awakened much later to the necessity of 
attending to the health of the people. European 
aristocracies have always secured themselves in a 
measure against physical degeneration by keeping 
a large proportion of their men in training as 
soldiers and sportsmen, and most of their women 
at ease in country seats. In our democratic soci- 
ety, which at first thought only of work and pro- 
duction, it is now to be seen that public attention 
is directed more and more to the means of pre- 
serving and increasing health and vigor. Some 
of these means are country schools for city chil- 
dren, country or seaside houses for families, pub- 



336 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

lie parks and gardens, out-of-door sports, sys- 
tematic physical training in schools and colleges, 
vacations for business and professional men, and 
improvements in the dwellings and the diet of all 
classes. Democracy leaves marriages and social 
groups to be determined by natural affiliation or 
congeniality of tastes and pursuits, which is the 
effective principle in the association of cultivated 
persons under all forms of government. So far 
from having any quarrel with the law of heredi- 
tary transmission, it leaves the principle of hered- 
ity perfectly free to act ; but it does, not add to 
the natural sanctions of that principle an unnec- 
essary bounty of privileges conferred by law. 

From this consideration of the supposed conflict 
between democracy and the law of heredity the 
transition is easy to my last topic; namely, the 
effect of democratic institutions on the produc- 
tion of ladies and gentlemen. There can be no 
question that a general amelioration of manners 
is brought about in a democracy by public schools, 
democratic churches, public conveyances without 
distinction of class, universal suffrage, town-meet- 
ings, and all the multifarious associations in which 
democratic society delights ; but this general 
amelioration might exist, and yet the highest types 
of manners might fail. Do these fail.^^ On this 
important point American experience is already 
interesting, and I think conclusive. Forty years 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 337 

ago Emerson said it was a chief felicity of our 
country that it excelled in women. It excels more 
and more. Who has not seen in public and in 
private life American women unsurpassable in 
grace and graciousness, in serenity and dignity, 
in effluent gladness and abounding courtesy.'' 
Now, the lady is the consummate fruit of human 
society at its best. In all the higher walks of 
American life there are men whose bearing and 
aspect at once distinguish them as gentlemen. 
They have personal force, magnanimity, modera- 
tion, and refinement ; they are quick to see and 
to sympathize ; they are pure, brave, and firm. 
These are also the qualities that command success ; 
and herein lies the only natural connection be- 
tween the possession of property and nobility of 
character. In a mobile or free society the ex- 
cellent or noble man is likely to win ease and 
independence ; but it does not follow that under 
any form of government the man of many posses- 
sions is necessarily excellent. On the evidence of 
my reading and of my personal observation at 
home and abroad, I fully believe that there is a 
larger proportion of ladies and gentlemen in the 
United States than in any other country. This 
proposition is, I think, true with the highest defini- 
tion of the term " lady " or " gentleman ; " but it 
is also true, if ladies and gentlemen are only per- 
sons who are clean and well-dressed, who speak 



338 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

gently and eat with their forks. It is unnecessary, 
however, to claim any superiority for democracy 
in this respect ; enough that the highest types of 
manners in men and women are produced abun- 
dantly on democratic soil. 

It would appear then from American experience 
that neither generations of privileged ancestors, 
nor large inherited possessions, are necessary to 
the making of a lady or a gentleman. What is 
necessary .f^ In the first place, natural gifts. The 
gentleman is born in a democracy, no less than in 
a monarchy. In other words, he is a person of 
fine bodily and spiritual qualities, mostly innate. 
Secondly, he must have, through elementary edu- 
cation, early access to books, and therefore to 
great thoughts and high examples. Thirdly, he 
must be early brought into contact with some re- 
fined and noble person — father, mother, teacher, 
pastor, employer, or friend. These are the only 
necessary conditions in peaceful times and in law- 
abiding communities like ours. Accordingly, such 
facts as the following are common in the United 
States : One of the numerous children of a small 
farmer manages to fit himself for college, works 
his way through college, becomes a lawyer, at 
forty is a much-trusted man in one of the chief 
cities of the Union, and is distinguished for the 
courtesy and dignity of his bearing and speech. 
The son of a country blacksmith is taught and 



THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 339 

helped to a small college by his minister; he him- 
self becomes a minister, has a long fight with pov- 
erty and ill-health, but at forty-five holds as high 
a place as his profession affords, and every line 
in his face and every tone in his voice betoken the 
gentleman. The sons and daughters of a success- 
ful shopkeeper take the highest places in the most 
cultivated society of their native place, and well 
deserve the preeminence accorded to them. The 
daughter of a man of very imperfect education, 
who began life with nothing and became a rich 
merchant, is singularly beautiful from youth to 
age, and possesses to the highest degree the charm 
of dignified and gracious manners. A young girl, 
not long out of school, the child of respectable 
but obscure parents, marries a public man, anci 
in conspicuous station bears herself with a grace, 
discretion, and nobleness which she could not have 
exceeded had her blood been royal for seven gen- 
erations. Striking cases of this kind will occur 
to every person in this assembly. They are every- 
day phenomena in American society. What con- 
clusion do they establish? They prove that the 
social mobility of a democracy, which permits the 
excellent and well-endowed of either sex to rise 
and to seek out each other, and which gives every 
advantageous variation or sport in a family stock 
free opportunity to develop, is immeasurably 
more beneficial to a nation than any selective in- 



340 CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 

breeding, founded on class distinctions, which has 
ever been devised. Since democracy has every 
advantage for producing in due season and pro- 
portion the best human types, it is reasonable to 
expect that science and literature, music and art, 
and all the finer graces of society will develop and 
thrive in America, as soon as the more urgent 
tasks of subduing a wilderness and organizing 
society upon an untried plan are fairly accom- 
plished. 

Such are some of the reasons drawn from ex- 
perience for believing that our ship of state is 
stout and sound ; but she sails — 

. . . the sea 
Of storm-engendering liberty — ^ 

the happiness of the greatest number her destined 
haven. Her safety requires incessant watchful- 
ness and readiness. Without trusty eyes on the 
lookout, and a prompt hand at the wheel, the 
stoutest ship may be dismantled by a passing 
squall. It is only intelligence and discipline which 
carry the ship to its port. 

^ Lowell, An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876. 



WAR^ 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

It has been a favorite study of modern philos- 
ophy to indicate the steps of human progress, to 
watch the rising of a thought in one man's mind, 
the communication of it to a few, to a small mi- 
nority, its expansion and general reception, until 
it publishes itself to the world by destroying the 
existing laws and institutions, and the generation 
of new. Looked at in this general and historical 
way, many things wear a very different face from 
that they show near by, and one at a time, — ^and, 
particularly, war. War, which to sane men at 
the present day begins to look like an epidemic 
insanity, breaking out here and there like the 
cholera or influenza, infecting men's brains instead 
of their bowels, — when seen in the remote past, in 
the infancy of society, appears a part of the con- 
nection of events, and, in its place, necessary. 

As far as history has preserved to us the slow 
unfoldings of any savage tribe, it is not easy to 
see how war could be avoided by such wild, pas- 
sionate, needy, ungoverned, strong-bodied crea- 

* A lecture delivered in Boston, in March, 1838. 
341 



342 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

tures. For in the infancy of society, when a thin 
population and improvidence make the supply of 
food and of shelter insufficient and very precari- 
ous, and when hunger, thirst, ague and frozen 
limbs universally take precedence of the wants of 
the mind and the heart, the necessities of the 
strong will certainly be satisfied at the cost of the 
weak, at whatever peril of future revenge. It is 
plain, too, that in the first dawnings of the religi- 
ous sentiment, that blends itself with their pas- 
sions and is oil to the fire. Not only every tribe 
has war-gods, religious festivals in victory, but 
religious wars. 

The student of history acquiesces the more read- 
ily in this copious bloodshed of the early annals, 
bloodshed in God's name too, when he learns that 
it is a temporary and preparatory state, and does 
actively forward the culture of man. War edu- 
cates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects 
the physical constitution, brings men into such 
swift and close collision in critical moments that 
man measures man. On its own scale, on the vir- 
tues it loves, it endures no counterfeit, but shakes 
the whole society until every atom falls into the 
place its specific gravity assigns it. It presently 
finds the value of good sense and of foresight, and 
Ulysses takes rank next to Achilles. The leaders, 
picked men of a courage and vigor tried and 
augmented in fifty battles, are emulous to dis- 



WAR 343 

tinguish themselves above each other by new 
merits, as clemency, hospitality, splendor of liv- 
ing. The people imitate the chiefs. The strong 
tribe, in which war has become an art, attack and 
conquer their neighbors, and teach them their arts 
and virtues. New territory, augmented numbers 
and extended interests call out new virtues and 
abilities, and the tribe makes long strides. And, 
finally, when much progress has been made, all its 
secrets of wisdom and art are disseminated by its 
invasions. Plutarch, in his essay " On the For- 
tune of Alexander," considers the invasion and 
conquest of the East by Alexander as one of the 
most bright and pleasing pages in history; 
and it must be owned he gives sound rea- 
son for his opinion. It had the effect of 
uniting into one great interest the divided 
commonwealths of Greece, and infusing a new 
and more enlarged public spirit into the coun- 
cils of their statesmen. It carried the arts and 
language and philosophy of the Greeks into the 
sluggish and barbarous nations of Persia, As- 
syria and India. It introduced the arts of hus- 
bandry among tribes of hunters and shepherds. 
It weaned the Scythians and Persians from some 
cruel and licentious practices to a more civil way 
of life. It introduced the sacredness of marriage 
among them. It built seventy cities, and sowed 
the Greek customs and humane laws over Asia, and 



SM RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

united hostile nations under one code. It brought 
different families of the human race together, — 
to blows at first, but afterwards to truce, to trade 
and to intermarriage. It would be very easy to 
show analogous benefits that have resulted from 
military movements of later ages. 

Considerations of this kind lead us to a true 
view of the nature and office of war. We see it 
is the subject of all history; that it has been the 
principal employment of the most conspicuous 
men; that it is at this moment the delight of half 
the world, of almost all young and ignorant per- 
sons ; that it is exhibited to us continually in the 
dumb show of brute nature, where war between 
tribes, and between individuals of the same tribe, 
perpetually rages. The microscope reveals minia- 
ture butchery in atomies and infinitely small biters 
that swim and fight in an illuminated drop of 
water; and the little globe is but a too faithful 
miniature of the large. 

What does all this war, beginning from the 
lowest races and reaching up to man, signify .? Is 
it not manifest that it covers a great and benefi- 
cent principle, which nature had deeply at heart.'' 
What is that principle .^ — It is self-help. Nature 
implants with life the instinct of self-help, per- 
petual struggle to be, to resist opposition, to 
attain to freedom, to attain to a mastery and the 
securit}^ of a permanent, self-defended being; and 



WAR 345 

to each creature these objects are made so dear 
that it risks its life continually in the struggle for 
these ends. 

But whilst this principle, necessarily, is in- 
wrought into the fabric of every creature, yet it 
is but one instinct ; and though a primary one, or 
we may say the very first, yet the appearance of 
the other instincts immediately modifies and con- 
trols this ; turns its energies into harmless, useful 
and high courses, showing thereby what was its 
ultimate design; and, finally, takes out its fangs. 
The instinct of self-help is very early unfolded in 
the coarse and merely brute form of war, only in 
the childhood and imbecility of the other instincts, 
and remains in that form only until their develop- 
ment. It is the ignorant and childish part of man- 
kind that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant 
minds want excitement, as all boys kill cats. 
Bull-baiting, cockpits and the boxer's ring are 
the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal 
nature alone has been developed. In some parts 
of this country, where the intellectual and moral 
faculties have as yet scarcely any culture, the ab- 
sorbing topic of all conversation is whipping; who 
fought, and which whipped.'' Of man, boy, or 
beast, the only trait that much interests the 
speakers is the pugnacity. And why.? Because 
the speaker has as yet no other image of manly 
activity and virtue, none of endurance, none of 



846 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

perseverance, none of charity, none of the attain- 
ment of truth. Put him into a circle of culti- 
vated men, where the conversation broaches the 
great questions that besiege the human reason, 
and he would be dumb and unhappy, as an Indian 
in church. 

To men of a sedate and mature spirit, in whom 
is any knowledge or mental activity, the detail of 
battle becomes insupportably tedious and revolt- 
ing. It is like the talk of one of those mono- 
maniacs whom we sometimes meet in society, who 
converse on horses ; and Fontenelle ^ expressed a 
volume of meaning when he said, " I hate war, for 
it spoils conversation." 

Nothing is plainer than that the sympathy with 
war is a juvenile and temporary state. Not only 
the moral sentiment, but trade, learning and 
whatever makes intercourse, conspire to put it 
down. Trade, as all men know, is the antagonist 
of war. Wherever there is no property, the people 
will put on the knapsack for bread; but trade is 
instantly endangered and destroyed. And, more- 
over, trade brings men to look each other in the 
face, and gives the parties the knowledge that 
these enemies over sea or over the mountain are 
such men as we ; who laugh and grieve, who love 
and fear, as we do. And learning and art, and 

^ Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), a French 
man of letters. 



WAR 347 

especially religion, weave ties that make war look 
like fratricide, as it is. And as all history is the 
picture of war, as we have said, so it is no less 
true that it is the record of the mitigation and 
decline of war. Early in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries, the Italian cities had grown so populous 
and strong, that they forced the rural nobility to 
dismantle their castles, which were dens of cruelty, 
and come and reside in the towns. The Popes, to 
their eternal honor, declared religious jubilees, 
during which all hostilities were suspended 
throughout Christendom, and man had a breath- 
ing space. The increase of civility has abolished 
the use of poison and of torture, once supposed 
as necessary as navies now. And, finally, the art 
of war, what with gunpowder and tactics, has 
made, as all men know, battles less frequent and 
less murderous. 

By all these means, war has been steadily on the 
decline; and we read with astonishment of the 
beastly fighting of the old times. Only in Eliza- 
beth's time, out of the European waters, piracy 
was all but universal. The proverb was, — " No 
peace beyond the line ; " and the seamen shipped 
on the buccaneer's bargain, " No prey, no 
pay." The celebrated Cavendish,^ who was 
thought in his times a good Christian man, wrote 

^ Sir Thomas Cavendish (1564-1592), the second English- 
man to circumnavigate the globe. 



34*8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

thus to Lord Hunsdon, on his return from a voy- 
age round the world : — " September, 1588. It 
hath pleased Almighty God to suffer me to cir- 
cumpass the whole globe of the world, entering 
in at the Strait of Magellan, and returning by the 
Cape of Buena Esperan9a ; ^ in which voyage, I 
have either discovered or brought certain intelli- 
gence of all the rich places of the world, which 
were ever discovered by any Christian. I navi- 
gated along the coast of Chili, Peru, and New 
Spain, where I made great spoils. I burnt and 
sunL' nineteen sail of ships, small and great. All 
the villages and towns that ever I landed at, I 
burned and spoiled. And had I not been discov- 
ered upon the coast, I had taken great quantity 
of treasure. The matter of most profit to me was 
a great ship of the king's, which I took at Cali- 
fornia," etc. And the good Cavendish piously be- 
gins this statement, — " It hath pleased Almighty 
God." 

Indeed, our American annals have preserved the 
vestiges of barbarous warfare down to the more 
recent times. I read in Williams's ^ History/ of 
Maine, that " Assacombuit, the Sagamore of the 
Anagunticook tribe, was remarkable for his turpi- 

^ Cape of Good Hope. 

^ Evidently an error. The incident, in approximately the 
same words, is related in The History of the State of Maine, 
by William Durkee Williamson (1779-1846). 



WAR 349 

tude and ferocity above all other known Indians; 
that, in 1705, Vaudreuil ^ sent him to France, 
where he was introduced to the king. When he 
appeared at court, he lifted up his hand, and said, 
' This hand has slain a hundred and fifty of your 
majesty's enemies within the territories of New 
England.' This so pleased the king that he 
knighted him, and ordered a pension of eight livres 
a day to be paid him during life." This valuable 
person, on his return to America, took to killing 
his own neighbors and kindred, with such appetite 
that his tribe combined against him, and would 
have killed him had he not fled his country for 
ever. 

The scandal which we feel in such facts cer- 
tainly shows that we have got on a little. All 
history is the decline of war, though the slow de- 
cline. All that society has yet gained is mitiga- 
tion : the doctrine of the right of war still remains. 

For ages (for ideas work in ages, and animate 
vast societies of men) the human race has gone on 
under the tyranny — shall I so call it.'' — of this 
first brutish form of their effort to be men; that 
is, for ages they have shared so much of the na- 
ture of the lower animals, the tiger and the shark, 
and the savages of the water-drop. They have 
nearly exhausted all the good and all the evil of 

^ Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil (1641P-1725), 
Governor-General of Canada. 



350 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

this form : they have held as fast to this degrada- 
tion as their worst enemy could desire; but all 
things have an end, and so has this. The eternal 
germination of the better has unfolded new 
powers, new instincts, which were really concealed 
under this rough and base rind. The sublime ques- 
tion has startled one and another happy soul in 
different quarters of the globe, — 'Cannot love be, 
as well as hate? Would not love answer the same 
end, or even a better .^^ Cannot peace be, as well 
as war.^ 

This thought is no man's invention, neither St. 
Pierre's nor Rousseau's, but the rising of the gen- 
eral tide in the human soul, — and rising highest, 
and first made visible, in the most simple and pure 
souls, who have therefore announced it to us before- 
hand; but presently we all see it. It has now be- 
come so distinct as to be a social thought : societies 
can be formed on it. It is expounded, illustrated, 
defined, with different degrees of clearness ; and its 
actualization, or the measures it should inspire, 
predicted according to the light of each seer. 

The idea itself is the epoch ; the fact that it has 
become so distinct to any small number of persons 
as to become a subject of prayer and hope, of con- 
cert and discussion, — that is the commanding fact. 
This having come, much more will follow. Revolu- 
tions go not backward. The star once risen, 
though only one man in the hemisphere has yet 



WAR 351 

seen its upper limb in the horizon, will mount and 
mount, until it becomes visible to other men, to 
multitudes, and climbs the zenith of all eyes. And 
so it is not a great matter how long men refuse to 
believe the advent of peace : war is on its last legs ; 
and a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence 
of civilization over barbarism, of liberal govern- 
ments over feudal forms. The question for us is 
only How soon ? 

That the project of peace should appear vision- 
ary to great numbers of sensible men ; should ap- 
pear laughable even, to numbers ; should appear 
to the grave and good-natured to be embarrassed 
with extreme practical difficulties, — is very nat- 
ural. " This is a poor, tedious society of yours," 
they say : " we do not see what good can come of 
it. Peace ! why, we are all at peace now. But 
if a foreign nation should wantonly insult or 
plunder our commerce, or, worse yet, should land 
on our shores to rob and kill, you would not have 
us sit, and be robbed and killed .^^ You mistake the 
times ; you over-estimate the virtue of men. You 
forget that the quiet which now sleeps in cities and 
in farms, which lets the wagon go unguarded and 
the farm-house unbolted, rests on the perfect under- 
standing of all men that the musket, the halter 
and the jail stand behind there, ready to punish 
any disturber of it. All admit that this would be 
the best policy, if the world were all a church, if 



352 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

all men were the best men, if all would agree to 
accept this rule. But it is absurd for one nation 
to attempt it alone." 

In the first place, we answer that we never make 
much account of objections which merely respect 
the actual state of the world at this moment, but 
which admit the general expediency and perma- 
nent excellence of the project. What is the best 
must be the true; and what is true — that is, what 
is at bottom fit and agreeable to the constitution 
of man — must at last prevail over all obstruction 
and all opposition. There is no good now en- 
joyed by society that was not once as problemat- 
ical and visionary as this. It is the tendency of 
the true interest of man to become his desire and 
steadfast aim. 

But, further, it is a lesson which all history 
teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in 
circumstances. We have all grown up in the 
sight of frigates and navy yards, of armed forts 
and islands, of arsenals and militia. The refer- 
ence to any foreign register will inform us of the 
number of thousand or million men that are now 
under arms in the vast colonial system of the 
British empire, of Russia, Austria and France; 
and one is scared to find at what cost the peace 
of the globe is kept. This vast apparatus of 
artillery, of fleets, of stone bastions and trenches 
and embankments; this incessant patrolling of 



WAR S5S 

sentinels ; this waving of national flags ; this re- 
veille and evening gun ; this martial music and end- 
less playing of marches and singing of military and 
naval songs seem to us to constitute an imposing 
actual, which will not yield in centuries to the 
feeble, deprecatory voices of a handful of friends 
of peace. 

Thus always we are daunted by the appear- 
ances ; not seeing that their whole value lies at 
bottom in the state of mind. It is really a thought 
that built this portentous war-establishment, and 
a thought shall also melt it away. Every nation 
and every man instantly surround themselves with 
a material apparatus which exactly corresponds 
to their moral state, or their state of thought. 
Observe how every truth and every error, each a 
thought of some man's mind, clothes itself with 
societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, 
newspapers. Observe the ideas of the present day, 
— orthodoxy, skepticism, missions, popular edu- 
cation, temperance, anti-masonry, anti-slavery ; 
see how each of these abstractions has embodied 
itself in an imposing apparatus in the community ; 
and how timber, brick, lime and stone have flown 
into convenient shape, obedient to the master-idea 
reigning in the minds of many persons. 

You shall hear, some day, of a wild fancy which 
some man has in his brain, of the mischief of 
secret oaths, Come again one or two years after- 



S54 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

wards, and jou shall see it has built- great houses 
of solid wood and brick and mortar. You shall 
see a hundred presses printing a million sheets ; 
you shall see men and horses and wheels made to 
walk, run and roll for it : this great body of mat- 
ter thus executing that one man's wild thought. 
This happens daily, yearly about us, with half 
thoughts, often with flimsy lies, pieces of policy 
and speculation. With good nursing they will 
last three or four years before they will come to 
nothing. But when a truth appears, — as, for in- 
stance, a perception in the wit of one Columbus 
that there is land in the Western Sea; though he 
alone of all men has that thought, and they all 
j eer, — it will build ships ; it will build fleets ; it 
will carry over half Spain and half England; it 
will plant a colony, a state, nations and half a 
globe full of men. 

We surround ourselves always, according to our 
freedom and ability, with true images of ourselves 
in things, whether it be ships or books or cannons 
or churches. The standing army, the arsenal, the 
camp and the gibbet do not appertain to man. 
They only serve as an index to show where man is 
now ; what a bad, ungoverned temper he has ; what 
an ugly neighbor he is ; how his aff^ections halt ; 
how low his hope lies. He who loves the bristle of 
baj^onets only sees in their glitter what before- 
hand he feels in his heart. It is advance and 



WAR 355 

hatred ; it is that quivering hp, that cold, hating 
eye, which built magazines and powder-houses. 

It follows, of course, that the least change in 
the man will change his circumstances ; the least 
enlargement of his ideas, the least mitigation of 
his feelings in respect to other men ; if, for ex- 
ample, he could be inspired with a tender kind- 
ness to the souls of men, and should come to feel 
that every man was another self with whom he 
might come to join, as left hand works with right. 
Every degree of the ascendancy of this feeling 
would cause the most striking changes of external 
things : the tents would be struck ; the man-of-war 
would rot ashore ; the arms rust ; the cannon would 
become street-posts ; the pikes, a fisher's harpoon ; 
the marching regiment would be a caravan of 
emigrants, peaceful pioneers at the fountains of 
the Wabash and the Missouri. And so it must 
and will be: bayonet and sword must first re- 
treat a little from their ostentatious promi- 
nence; then quite hide themselves, as the sheriff's 
halter does now, inviting the attendance only of 
relations and friends ; and then, lastly, will be 
transferred to the museums of the curious, as 
poisoning and torturing tools are at this day. 

War and peace thus resolve themselves into a 
mercury of the state of cultivation. At a cer- 
tain stage of his progress, the man fights, if he 
be of a sound body and mind. At a certain higher 



356 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

stage, he makes no offensive demonstration, but is 
alert to repel injury, and of an unconquerable 
heart. At a still higher stage, he comes into the 
region of holiness ; passion has passed away from 
him; his warlike nature is all converted into an 
active medicinal principle ; he sacrifices himself, 
and accepts with alacrity wearisome tasks of 
denial and charity ; but, being attacked, he bears 
it and turns the other cheek, as one engaged, 
throughout his being, no longer to the service of 
an individual, but to the common soul of all men. 
Since the peace question has been before the 
public mind, those who affirm its right and ex- 
pediency have naturally been met with objections 
more or less weighty. There are cases frequently 
put by the curious, — moral problems, like those 
problems in arithmetic which in long winter even- 
ings the rustics try the hardness of their heads 
in ciphering out. And chiefly it is said, — Either 
accept this principle for better, for worse, carry 
it out to the end, and meet its absurd conse- 
quences ; or else, if you pretend to set an arbitrary 
limit, a " Thus far, no farther," then give up the 
principle, and take that limit which the common 
sense of all mankind has set, and which distin- 
guishes offensive war as criminal, defensive war as 
just. Otherwise, if you go for no war, then be 
consistent, and give up self-defence in the high- 
way, in your own house. Will you push it thus 



WAR 357 

far? Will you stick to your principle of non- 
resistance when your strong-box is broken open, 
when your wife and babes are insulted and 
slaughtered in your sight? If you say yes, you 
only invite the robber and assassin ; and a few 
bloody-minded desperadoes would soon butcher 
the good. 

In reply to this charge of absurdity on the ex- 
treme peace doctrine, as shown in the supposed 
consequences, I wish to say that such deductions 
consider only one half of the fact. They look 
only at the passive side of the friend of peace ; 
only at his passivity ; they quite omit to consider 
his activity. But no man, it may be presumed, 
ever embraced the cause of peace and philan- 
thropy for the sole end and satisfaction of being 
plundered and slain. A man does not come the 
length of the spirit of martyrdom without some 
active purpose, some equal motive, some flaming 
love. If you have a nation of men who have risen 
to that height of moral cultivation that they will 
not declare war or carry arms, for they have not 
so much madness left in their brains, you have a 
nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great 
and able men. Let me know more of that nation ; 
I shall not find them defenceless, with idle hands 
swinging at their sides. I shall find them men of 
love, honor and truth; men of an immense indus- 
try ; men whose influence is felt to the end of the 



358 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

earth ; men whose very look and voice carry the 
sentence of honor and shame ; and all forces yield 
to their energy and persuasion. Whenever we see 
the doctrine of peace embraced by a nation, we may 
be assured it will not be one that invites injury; 
but one, on the contrary, which has a friend in 
the bottom of the heart of every man, even of the 
violent and the base ; one against which no weapon 
can prosper; one which is looked upon as the 
asylum of the human race and has the tears and 
the blessings of mankind. 

In the second place, as far as it respects in- 
dividual action in difficult and extreme cases, I 
will say, such cases seldom or never occur to the 
good and just man; nor are we careful to say, 
or even to know, what in such crises is to be done. 
A wise man will never impawn his future being 
and action, and decide beforehand what he shall 
do in a given extreme event. Nature and God will 
instruct him in that hour. 

The question naturally arises. How is this new 
aspiration of the human mind to be made visible 
and real? How is it to pass out of thoughts into 
things ? 

Not, certainly, in the first place, in the way of 
routine and mere forms, — the universal specific of 
modern politics ; not by organizing a society, and 
going through a course of resolutions and public 
manifestoes, and being thus formally accredited 



WAR 359 

to the public and to the civility of the newspapers. 
We have played this game to tediousness. In 
some of our cities they choose noted duellists as 
presidents and officers of anti-duelling societies. 
Men who love that bloated vanity called public 
opinion think all is well if they have once got their 
bantling through a sufficient course of speeches 
and cheerings, of one, two, or three public meet- 
ings ; as if they could do anything : they vote and 
vote, cry hurrah on both sides, no man respon- 
sible, no man caring a pin. The next season, an 
Indian war, or an aggression on our commerce 
by Malays ; or the party this man votes with have 
an appropriation to carry through Congress: 
instantly he wags his head the other way, and 
cries. Havoc and war ! 

This is not to be carried by public opinion, but 
by private opinion, by private conviction, by 
private, dear and earnest love. For the only 
hope of this cause is in the increased insight, and 
it is to be accomplished by the spontaneous teach- 
ing, of the cultivated soul, in its secret experience 
and meditation, — that it is now time that it should 
pass out of the state of beast into the state of 
man ; it is to hear the voice of God, which bids the 
devils that have rended and torn him come out of 
him and let him now be clothed and walk forth in 
his right mind. 

Nor, in the next place, is the peace principle 



360 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

to be carried into effect by fear. It can never be 
defended, it can never be executed, by cowards. 
Everything great must be done in the spirit of 
greatness. The manhood that has been in war 
must be transferred to the cause of peace, before 
war can lose its charm, and peace be venerable to 
men. 

The attractiveness of war shows one thing 
through all the throats of artillery, the thunders of 
so many sieges, the sack of towns, the jousts of 
chivalry, the shocks of hosts, — this namely, the 
conviction of man universally, that a man should 
be himself responsible, with goods, health and 
life, for his behavior ; that he should not ask of 
the State protection ; should ask nothing of the 
State; should be himself a kingdom and a state; 
fearing no man ; quite willing to use the oppor- 
tunities and advantages that good government 
throw in his way, but nothing daunted, and not 
really the poorer if government, law and order 
went by the board ; because in himself reside in- 
finite resources ; because he is sure of himself, and 
never needs to ask another what in any crisis it 
behooves him to do. 

What makes to us the attractiveness of the 
Greek heroes? of the Roman? What makes the 
attractiveness of that romantic style of living 
which is the material of ten thousand plays and 
romances, from Shakspeare to Scott ; the feudal 



WAR 36,1 

baron, the French, the English nobility, the War- 
wicks, Plantagenets ? It is their absolute self- 
dependence. I do not wonder at the dislike some 
of the friends of peace have expressed at Shak- 
speare. The veriest churl and Jacobin cannot resist 
the influence of the style and manners of these 
haughty lords. We are affected, as boys and bar- 
barians are, by the appearance of a few rich and 
wilful gentlemen, who take their honor into their 
own keeping, defy the world, so confident are they 
of their courage and strength, and whose appear- 
ance is the arrival of so much life and virtue. In 
dangerous times they are presently tried, and 
therefore their name is a flourish of trumpets. 
They, at least, aff^ect us as a reality. They are 
not shams, but the substance of which that age and 
world is made. They are true heroes for their 
time. They make what is in their minds the great- 
est sacrifice. They will, for an injurious word, 
peril all their state and wealth, and go to the field. 
Take away that principle of responsibleness, and 
they become pirates and ruffians. 

This self-subsistency is the charm of war; for 
this self-subsistency is essential to our idea of man. 
But another age comes, a truer religion and ethics 
open, and a man puts himself under the dominion 
of principles. I see him to be the servant of truth, 
of love and of freedom, and immovable in the 
waves of the crowd. The man of principle, that 



362 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

is, the man who, without any flourish of trumpets, 
titles of lordship or train of guards, without any 
notice of his action abroad, expecting none, takes 
in solitude the right step uniformly, on his private 
choice and disdaining consequences, — does not 
yield, in my imagination, to any man. He is 
willing to be hanged at his own gate, rather than 
consent to any compromise of his freedom or the 
suppression of his conviction. I regard no longer 
those names that so tingled in my ear. This is a 
baron of a better nobility and a stouter stomach. 

The cause of peace is not the cause of cowardice. 
If peace is sought to be defended or preserved for 
the safety of the luxurious and the timid, it is a 
sham, and the peace will be base. War is better, 
and the peace will be broken. If peace is to be 
maintained, it must be by brave men, who have 
come up to the same height as the hero, namely, 
the will to carry their life in their hand, and stake 
it at any instant for their principle, but who have 
gone one step beyond the hero, and will not seek 
another man's life ; — men who have, by their intel- 
lectual insight or else by their moral elevation, 
attained such a perception of their own intrinsic 
worth, that they do not think property or their 
own body a sufficient good to be saved by such 
dereliction of principle as treating a man like a 
sheep. 

If the universal cry for reform of so many in- 



WAR 363 

veterate abuses, with which society rings, — if the 
desire of a large class of young men for a faith 
and hope, intellectual and religious, such as they 
have not yet found, be an omen to be trusted; 
if the disposition to rely more in study and in ac- 
tion on the unexplored riches of the human consti- 
tution, — if the search of the sublime laws of 
morals and the sources of hope and trust, in man, 
and not in books, in the present, and not in the 
past, proceed ; if the rising generation can be pro- 
voked to think it unworthy to nestle into every 
abomination of the past, and shall feel the gen- 
erous darings of austerity and virtue, then war 
has a short day, and human blood will cease to 
flow. 

It is of little consequence in what manner, 
through what organs, this purpose of mercy and 
holiness is effected. The proposition of the 
Congress of Nations is undoubtedly that at which 
the present fabric of our society and the present 
course of events do point. But the mind, once pre- 
pared for the reign of principles, will easily find 
modes of expressing its will. There is the highest 
fitness in the place and time in which this enter- 
prise is begun. Not in an obscure corner, not in 
a feudal Europe, not in an antiquated appanage 
where no onward step can be taken without rebel- 
lion, is this seed of benevolence laid in the furrow, 
with tears of hope ; but in this broad America of 



364 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

God and man, where the forest is only now falling, 
or yet to fall, and the green earth opened to the 
inundation of emigrant men from all quarters of 
oppression and guilt; here, where not a family, 
not a few men, but mankind, shall say what shall 
be ; here, we ask, Shall it be War, or shall it be 
Peace ? 



THE MORAL EQUIVALENT 
OF WAR^ 

WILLIAM JAMES 

The war against war is going to be no holiday 
excursion or camping party. The military feel- 
ings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their 
place among our ideals until better substitutes are 
offered than the glory and shame that come to 
nations as well as to individuals from the ups and 
downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade. 
There is something highly paradoxical in the mod- 
ern man's relation to war. Ask all our millions, 
north and south, whether they would vote now 
(were such a thing possible) to have our war for 
the Union expunged from history, and the record 
of a peaceful transition to the present time substi- 
tuted for that of its marches and battles, and prob- 
ably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes. 
Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and 

^ This essay was written for and first published by the 
American Association for International Conciliation; it 
appears also in a volume of the author's collected essays en- 
titled Memories and Studies (Longmans, Green, & Co.). 
Reprinted with the generous approval of the American 
Association and of Henry James, Junior. 

365 



S66 WILLIAM JAMES 

legends, are the most ideal part of what we now 
own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth 
more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those 
same people whether they would be willing in cold 
blood to start another civil war now to gain an- 
other similar possession, and not one man or 
woman would vote for the proposition. In modern 
eyes, precious though wars may be, they must not 
be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. 
Only when forced upon one, only when an enemy's 
injustice leaves us no alternative, is a war now 
thought permissible. 

It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier 
men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring 
tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess 
the females, was the most profitable, as well as the 
most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more 
martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples 
a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to 
mingle with the more fundamental appetite for 
plunder. 

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade 
to be a better avenue to plunder ; but modern man 
inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love 
of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irration- 
ality and horror is of no effect upon him. The 
horrors make the fascination. War is the strong 
life ; it is life in extremis ; ^ war-taxes are the only 
^ At the highest pitch. 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 867 

ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of 
all nations show us. 

History is a bath of blood. The Iliad is one 
long recital of how Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon 
and Hector killed. No detail of the wounds they 
made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon 
the story. Greek history is a panorama of jingo- 
ism and imperialism — war for war's sake, all the 
citizens being warriors. It is horrible reading, 
because of the irrationality of it all — save for the 
purpose of making " history " — and the history 
is that of the utter ruin of a civilization in intel- 
lectual respects perhaps the highest the earth has 
ever seen. 

Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, 
women, slaves, excitement, were their only motives. 
In the Peloponnesian war, for example, the Athe- 
nians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island 
where the "Venus of Milo " was found), hitherto 
neutral, to own their lordship. The envoys meet, 
and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in full, 
and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would 
have satisfied Matthew Arnold. " The powerful 
exact what they can," said the Athenians, " and 
the weak grant what they must." When the 
Meleans say that sooner than be slaves they will 
appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply, " Of the 
gods we believe and of men we know, that, by a 
law of their nature, wherever they can rule they 



368 WILLIAM JAMES 

will. This law was not made by us, and we are 
not the first to have acted upon it; we did but 
inherit it, and we know that you and all mankind, 
if you were as strong as we are, would do as we 
do. So much for the gods ; we have told you why 
we expect to stand as high in their good opinion 
as you." Well, the Meleans still refused, and their 
town was taken. " The Athenians," Thucydides 
quietly says, " thereupon put to death all who 
were of military age and made slaves of the women 
and children. They then colonized the island, 
sending thither five hundred settlers of their 
own." 

Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, 
nothing but an orgy of power and plunder, made 
romantic by the character of the hero. There was 
no rational principle in it, and the moment he died 
his generals and governors attacked one another. 
The cruelty of those times is incredible. When 
Rome finally conquered Greece, Paulus JEmilius 
was told by the Roman Senate to reward his 
soldiers for their toil by " giving " them the old 
kingdom of Epirus. They sacked seventy cities 
and carried off a hundred and fifty thousand in- 
habitants as slaves. How many they killed I know 
not ; but in Etolia they killed all the senators, five 
hundred and fifty in number. Brutus was " the 
noblest Roman of them all," but to reanimate his 
soldiers on the eve of Philippi he similarly prom- 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 369 

ises to give them the cities of Sparta and Thessa- 
lonica to ravage, if they win the fight. 

Such was the gory nurse that trained societies 
to cohesiveness. We inherit the warHke type ; and 
for most of the capacities of heroism that the 
human race is full of we have to thank this cruel 
history. Dead men tell no tales, and if there were 
any tribes of other type than this they have left 
no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity 
into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years 
of peace won't breed it out of us. The popular 
imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. 
Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting 
pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer 
war both governments began with bluff but 
couldn't stay there, the military tension was too 
much for them. In 1898 our people had read the 
word WAR in letters three inches high for three 
months in every newspaper. The pliant politician 
McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and 
our squalid war with Spain became a necessity. 

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious 
mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals 
are as strong as ever, but are confronted by re- 
flective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient 
freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the 
bestial side of military service. Pure loot and 
mastery seem no longer morally avowable motives, 
and pretexts must be found for attributing them 



370 WILLIAM JAMES 

solely to the enemy. England and we, our army 
and navy authorities repeat without ceasing, arm 
solely for " peace," Germany and Japan it is who 
are bent on loot and glory. " Peace " in military 
mouths to-day is a synonym for " war expected." 
The word has become a pure provocative, and no 
government wishing peace sincerely should allow 
it ever to be printed in a newspaper. Every up- 
to-date dictionary should say that " peace " and 
" war " mean the same thing, now in posse,^ now 
in actu.^ It may even reasonably be said that the 
intensely sharp competitive preparation for war 
by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceas- 
ing ; and that the battles are only a sort of public 
verification of the mastery gained during the 
" peace "-interval. 

It is plain that on this subject civilized man 
has developed a sort of double personality. If we 
take European nations, no legitimate interest of 
any one of them would seem to justify the tre- 
mendous destructions which a war to compass it 
would necessarily entail. It would seem as though 
common sense and reason ought to find a way to 
reach agreement in every conflict of honest inter- 
ests. I myself think it our bounden duty to 
believe in such international rationality as possible. 
But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard 
it is to bring the peace-party and the war-party 
^ Potential. '^ Actual. 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 371 

together, and I believe that the difficulty is due to 
certain deficiencies in the program of pacificism 
which set the militarist imagination strongly, and 
to a certain extent justifiably, against it. In the 
whole discussion both sides are on imaginative and 
sentimental ground. It is but one utopia against 
another, and everything one says must be abstract 
and hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and 
caution, I will try to characterize in abstract 
strokes the opposite imaginative forces, and point 
out what to my own very fallible mind seems the 
best Utopian hypothesis, the most promising line 
of conciliation. 

In my remarks, pacificist though I am, I will 
refuse to speak of the bestial side of the war- 
regime (already done justice to by many writers) 
and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic 
sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable ; 
nor does any one deny that war is the romance of 
history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul 
of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent 
death the soul of all romance. The militarily 
patriotic and romantic-minded everywhere, and 
especially the professional military class, refuse to 
admit for a moment that war may be a transitory 
phenomenon in social evolution. The notion of a 
sheep's paradise like that revolts, they say, our 
higher imagination. Where then would be the 
steeps of life.? If war had ever stopped, we should 



Sn WILLIAM JAMES 

have to re-invent it, on this view, to redeem life 
from flat degeneration. 

Reflective apologists for war at the present day 
all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. 
Its profits are to the vanquished as well as to the 
victor ; and quite apart from any question of 
profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it 
is human nature at its highest dynamic. Its 
" horrors " are a cheap price to pay for rescue 
from the only alternative supposed, of a world of 
clerks and teachers, of co-education and zoophily, 
of " consumer's leagues " and " associated chari- 
ties," of industrialism unlimited, and feminism 
unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any 
more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a planet! 

So far as the central essence of this feeling 
goes, no healthy minded person, it seems to me, 
can help to some degree partaking of it. Mili- 
tarism is the great preserver of our ideals of 
hardihood, and human life with no use for hardi- 
hood would be contemptible. Without risks or 
prizes for the darer, history would be insipid in- 
deed; and there is a type of military character 
which every one feels that the race should never 
cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its 
superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, 
of keeping military characters in stock — of keep- 
ing them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves 
and as pure pieces of perfection, — so that Roose- 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 373 

velt's weaklings and mollycoddles may not end by 
making everything else disappear from the face 
of nature. 

This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the 
innermost soul of army-writings. Without any 
exception known to me, militarist authors take a 
highly mystical view of their subject, and regard 
war as a biological or sociological necessity, un- 
controlled by ordinary psychological checks and 
motives. When the time of development is ripe 
the war must come, reason or no reason, for the 
justifications pleaded are invariably fictitious. 
War is, in short, a permanent human obligation. 
General Homer Lea, in his recent book. The Valor 
of Ignorance, plants himself squarely on this 
ground. Readiness for war is for him the essence 
of nationality, and ability in it the supreme meas- 
ure of the health of nations. 

Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary 
— they must necessarily expand or shrink, accord- 
ing to their vitality or decrepitude. Japan now is 
culminating; and by the fatal law in question it 
is impossible that her statesmen should not long 
since have entered, with extraordinary foresight, 
upon a vast policy of conquest — the game in which 
the first moves were her wars with China and 
Russia and her treaty with England, and of which 
the final objective is the capture of the Philippines, 
the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and the whole of 



S74< WILLIAM JAMES 

our Coast west of the Sierra Passes. This will 
give Japan what her ineluctable vocation as a 
state absolutely forces her to claim, the possession 
of the entire Pacific Ocean ; and to oppose these 
deep designs we Americans have, according to our 
author, nothing but our conceit, our ignorance, 
our commercialism, our corruption, and our femin- 
ism. General Lea makes a minute technical com- 
parison of the military strength which we at pres- 
ent could oppose to the strength of Japan, and 
concludes that the islands, Alaska, Oregon, and 
Southern California, would fall almost without 
resistance, that San Francisco must surrender in 
a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three 
or four months the war would be over, and our 
republic, unable to regain what it had heedlessly 
neglected to protect sufficiently, would then " dis- 
integrate," until perhaps some Caesar should arise 
to weld us again into a nation. 

A dismal forecast indeed! Yet not unplausible, 
if the mentality of Japan's statesmen be of the 
Caesarian type of which history shows so many 
examples, and which is all that General Lea seems 
able to imagine. But there is no reason to think 
that women can no longer be the mothers of 
Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters ; and if 
these come in Japan and find their opportunity, 
just such surprises as The Valor of Ignorance 
paints may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 375 

still are of the innermost recesses of Japanese 
mentality, we may be foolhardy to disregard such 
possibilities. 

Other militarists are more complex and more 
moral in their considerations. The Philosophie 
des Krieges,^ by S. R. Steinmetz, is a good ex- 
ample. War, according to this author, is an 
ordeal instituted by God, who weighs the nations 
in its balance. It is the essential form of the State, 
and the only function in which peoples can employ 
all their powers at once and convergently. No 
victory is possible save as the resultant of a totality 
of virtues, no defeat for which some vice or weak- 
ness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, 
tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventive- 
ness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor 
— there isn't a moral or intellectual point of 
superiority that doesn't tell, when God holds his 
assizes and hurls the peoples upon one another. 
Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht; ^ and Dr. 
Steinmetz does not believe that in the long run 
chance and luck play any part in apportioning the 
issues. 

The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are 
virtues anyhow, superiorities that count in peaceful 
as well as in military competition ; but the strain 
on them, being infinitely intenser in the latter case, 

1 Philosophy of War. 

^ The history of the world is a judgment upon the world. 



3T6 WILLIAM JAMES 

makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. 
No ordeal is comparable to its winnowings. Its 
dread hammer is the welder of men into cohesive 
states, and nowhere but in such states can human 
nature adequately develop its capacity. The only 
alternative is " degeneration." 

Dr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his 
book, short as it is, takes much into account. Its 
upshot can, it seems to me, be summed up in Simon 
Patten's word, that mankind was nursed in pain 
and fear, and that the transition to a " pleasure- 
economy " may be fatal to a being wielding no 
powers of defence against its disintegrative influ- 
ences. If we speak of the fear of emancipation 
from the fear-regime, we put the whole situation 
into a single phrase ; fear regarding ourselves now 
taking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy. 

Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all 
seems to lead back to two unwillingnesses of the 
imagination, one eesthetic, and the other moral; 
unwillingness, first, to envisage a future in which 
army-life, with its many elements of charm, shall 
be forever impossible, and in which the destinies 
of peoples shall nevermore be decided quickly, 
thrillingly, and tragically, by force, but only 
gradually and insipidly by " evolution " ; and, 
secondly, unwillingness to see the supreme theatre 
of human strenuousness closed, and the splendid 
military aptitudes of men doomed to keep always 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 377 

in a state of latency and never show themselves 
in action. These insistent unwillingnesses, no less 
than other aesthetic and ethical insistencies, have, 
it seems to me, to be listened to and respected. 
One cannot meet them effectively by mere counter- 
insistency on war's expensiveness and horror. The 
horror makes the thrill; and when the question is 
of getting the extremest and supremest out of 
human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious. 
The weakness of so much merely negative criticism 
is evident — pacificism makes no converts from the 
military party. The military party denies neither 
the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it 
only says that these things tell but half the story. 
It only says that war is worth them ; that, taking 
human nature as a whole, its wars are its best pro- 
tection against its weaker and more cowardly self, 
and that mankind cannot afford to adopt a peace- 
economy. 

Pacificists ought to enter more deeply into the 
sesthetical and ethical point of view of their oppo- 
nents. Do that first in any controversy, says J. J. 
Chapman ; then move the point, and your opponent 
will follow. So long as anti-militarists propose 
no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no 
moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might 
say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long 
they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situa- 
tion. And as a rule they do fail. The duties, 



378 WILLIAM JAMES 

penalties, and sanctions pictured in the Utopias 
they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the 
military-minded. Tolstoi's pacificism is the only 
exception to this rule, for it is profoundly pessi- 
mistic as regards all this world's values, and makes 
the fear of the Lord furnish the moral spur pro- 
vided elsewhere by the fear of the enemy. But 
our socialistic peace-advocates all believe abso- 
lutely in this world's values ; and instead of the 
fear of the Lord and the fear of the enemy, the 
only fear they reckon with is the fear of poverty 
if one be lazy. This weakness pervades all the 
socialistic literature with which I am acquainted. 
Even in Lowes Dickinson's exquisite dialogue,^ 
high wages and short hours are the only forces 
invoked for overcoming man's distaste for repul- 
sive kinds of labor. Meanwhile men at large still 
live as they always have lived, under a pain-and- 
f ear economy — for those of us who live in an ease- 
economy are but an island in the stormy ocean — 
and the whole atmosphere of present-day Utopian 
literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to peo- 
ple who still keep a sense for life's more bitter 
flavors. It suggests, in truth, ubiquitous inferi- 
ority. 

Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn 
of it is the keynote of the military temper. 
"Dogs, would you live forever?" shouted Fred- 

^ Justice and Liberty, N. Y., 1909. [Author's note.] 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 379 

erick the Great. " Yes," say our Utopians, " let 
us live forever, and raise our level gradually." 
The best thing about our " inferiors " to-day is 
that they are as tough as nails, and physically and 
morally almost as insensitive. Utopianism would 
see them soft and squeamish, while militarism 
would keep their callousness, but transfigure it 
into a meritorious characteristic, needed by " the 
service," and redeemed by that from the suspicion 
of inferiority. All the qualities of a man acquire 
dignity when he knows that the service of the col- 
lectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of 
the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. 
No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such 
pride; but it has to be confessed that the only 
sentiment which the image of pacific cosmopolitan 
industrialism is capable of arousing in countless 
worthy breasts is shame at the idea of belonging 
to such a collectivity. It is obvious that the 
United States of America as they exist to-day 
impress a mind like General Lea's as so much 
human blubber. Where is the sharpness and pre- 
cipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's 
own, or another's ? Where is the savage " yes " 
and "no," the unconditional duty? Where is the 
conscription? Where is the blood-tax? Where 
is anything that one feels honored by belonging 
to? 

Having said thus much in preparation, I will 



380 WILLIAM JAMES 

now confess my own utopia. I devoutly believe in 
the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of 
some sort of a socialistic equilibrium. The fatal- 
istic view of the war-function is to me nonsense, for 
I know that war-making is due to definite motives 
and subject to prudential checks and reasonable 
criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. 
And when whole nations are the armies, and the 
science of destruction vies in intellectual refine- 
ment with the sciences of production, I see that 
war becomes absurd and impossible from its own 
monstrosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to 
be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must 
make common cause against them. I see no reason 
why all this should not apply to yellow as well as 
to white countries, and I look forward to a future 
when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as be- 
tween civilized peoples. 

All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into 
the anti-militarist party. But I do not believe 
that peace either ought to be or will be permanent 
on this globe, unless the states pacifically organ- 
ized preserve some of the old elements of army- 
discipline. A permanently successful peace-econ- 
omy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the 
more or less socialistic future towards which man- 
kind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves 
collectively to those severities which answer to our 
real position upon this only partly hospitable 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 381 

globe. We must make new energies and hardi- 
hoods continue the manliness to which the military 
mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must 
be the enduring cement ; intrepidity, contempt of 
softness, surrender of private interest, obedience 
to command, must still remain the rock upon which 
states are built — ^unless, indeed, we wish for dan- 
gerous reactions against commonwealths fit only 
for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever 
a centre of crystallization for military minded 
enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neigh- 
borhood. 

The war-party is assuredly right in affirming 
and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although 
originally gained by the race through war, are 
absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic 
pride and ambition in their military form are, 
after all, only specifications of a more general com- 
petitive passion. They are its first form, but that 
is no reason for supposing them to be its last form. 
Men now are proud of belonging to a conquering 
nation, and without a murmur they lay down their 
persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may 
fend off subjection. But who can be sure that 
other aspects of one^s country may not, with time 
and education and suggestion enough, come to be 
regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride 
and shame? Why should men not some day feel 
that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to a collec- 



382 WILLIAM JAMES 

tivity superior in any ideal respect? Why should 
they not blush with indignant shame if the 
community that owns them is vile in any way 
whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, 
now feel this civic passion. It is only a question 
of blowing on the spark till the whole population 
gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old 
morals of military honor, a stable system of morals 
of civic honor builds itself up. What the whole 
community comes to believe in grasps the indi- 
vidual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped 
us so far ; but constructive interests may some day 
seem no less imperative, and impose on the indi- 
vidual a hardly lighter burden. 

Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. 
There is nothing to make one indignant in the mere 
fact that life is hard, that men should toil and 
suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all 
are such, and we can stand it. But that so many 
men, by mere accidents of birth and opportunity, 
should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain 
and hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, 
should have no vacation, while others natively no 
more deserving never get any taste of this cam- 
paigning life at all, — this is capable of arousing 
indignation in reflective minds. It may end by 
seemins; shameful to all of us that some of us have 
nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but 
unmanly ease. If now — and this is my idea — ^there 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 383 

were, instead of military conscription a conscrip- 
tion of the whole youthful population to form for 
a certain number of years a part of the army en- 
listed against Nature, the injustice would tend to 
be evened out, and numerous other goods to the 
commonwealth would follow. The military ideals 
of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into 
the growing fibre of the people ; no one would re- 
main blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, 
to man's real relations to the globe he lives on, and 
to the permanently sour and hard foundations of 
his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight 
trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dishwash- 
ing, clothes-washing, and window-washing, to 
road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and 
stoke-holds, and to the frames of skyscrapers, 
would our gilded youths be drafted off, according 
to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out 
of them, and to come back into society with 
healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They 
would have paid their blood-tax, done their own 
part in the immemorial human warfare against 
nature ; they would tread the earth more proudly, 
the women would value them more highly, they 
would be better fathers and teachers of the fol- 
lowing generation. 

Such a conscription, with the state of public 
opinion that would have required it, and the many 
moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in the 



384 WILLIAM JAMES 

midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues 
which the military party is so afraid of seeing 
disappear in peace. We should get toughness 
without callousness, authority with as little crim- 
inal cruelty as possible, and painful work done 
cheerily because the duty is temporary, and 
threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole re- 
mainder of one's life. I spoke of the " moral 
equivalent " of war. So far, war has been the 
only force that can discipline a whole community, 
and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I 
believe that war must have its way. But I have 
no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and 
shames of social man, once developed to a certain 
intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral 
equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just 
as effective for preserving manliness of type. It 
is but a question of time, of skillful propagandism, 
and of opinion-making men seizing historic oppor- 
tunities. 

The martial type of character can be bred with- 
out war. Strenuous honor and disinterestedness 
abound elsewhere. Priests and medical men are in 
a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel 
some degree of it imperative if we were conscious 
of our work as an obligatory service to the state. 
We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, 
and our pride would rise accordingly. We could 
be poor, then, without humiliation, as army officers 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 385 

now are. The only thing needed henceforward is 
to inflame the civic temper as past history has 
inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, as 
usual, sees the centre of the situation. " In many 
ways," he says, " military organization is the most 
peaceful of activities. When the contemporary 
man steps from the street, of clamorous insincere 
advertisement, push, adulteration, underselling 
and intermittent employment into the barrack- 
yard, he steps on to a higher social plane, into 
an atmosphere of service and co-operation and of 
infinitely more honorable emulations. Here at 
least men are not flung out of employment to 
degenerate because there is no immediate work for 
them to do. They are fed and drilled and trained 
for better services. Here at least a man is sup- 
posed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and 
not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble and 
irregular endowment of research by commercial- 
ism, its little short-sighted snatches at profit by 
innovation and scientific economy, see how re- 
markable is the steady and rapid development of 
method and appliances in naval and military 
aff^airs ! Nothing is more striking than to com- 
pare the progress of civil conveniences which has 
been left almost entirely to the trader, to the 
progress in military apparatus during the last 
few decades. The house-appliances of to-day, for 
example, are little better than they were fifty years 



386 WILLIAM JAMES 

ago. A house of to-day is still almost as ill- 
ventilated, badly heated by wasteful fires, clumsily 
arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. 
Houses a couple of hundred years old are still 
satisfactory places of residence, so little have our 
standards risen. But the rifle or battleship of fifty 
years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to 
those we possess ; in power, in speed, in convenience 
alike. No one has a use now for such superannu- 
ated things." ^ 

Wells adds ^ that he thinks that the conceptions 
of order and discipline, the tradition of service and 
devotion, of physical fitness, unstinted exertion, 
and universal responsibility, which universal mili- 
tary duty is now teaching European nations, will 
remain a permanent acquisition, when the last am- 
munition has been used in the fireworks that cele- 
brate the final peace. I believe as he does. It 
would be simply preposterous if the only force 
that could work ideals of honor and standards of 
efl[iciency into English or American natures should 
be the fear of being killed by the Germans or the 
Japanese. Great indeed is Fear ; but it is not, as 
our military enthusiasts believe and try to make 
us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening 
the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy. The 
amount of alteration in public opinion which my 

^ First and Last Things, 1908, p. 215. [Author's note.] 
^ Ibid., p. 226. [Author's note.] 



MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 387 

Utopia postulates is vastly less than the difference 
between the mentality of those black warriors who 
pursued Stanley's party on the Congo with their 
cannibal war-cry of " Meat ! Meat ! " and that of 
the " general-staff " of any civilized nation. 
History has seen the latter interval bridged over: 
the former one can be bridged over much more 
easily. 



THE END 



